£1 Authorisation - Change Amount?

cheesetoast

A question - if a company charges a £1 pending transaction to your account, then your card is lost (blocked and reissued with a different number which the company doesn't know), can the company "change" the authorised amount to say, £100, when finalising the transaction? Or would they only be able to take the £1 that's been authorised?

Long story short - did a transaction last week, £1 got held, the transaction didn't happen (was trying to book a flight which i think was no longer available), travel agent confirmed the transaction was cancelled, now they've done another £1 hold today, so I've reported it to the card company, who are blocking and replacing the card.

Westie983

Yes they can take extra funds then the pre - auth of £1 this happens because you may have a contract between yourselves and a company, an example of this is Supermarkets online shopping, they pre authorise £1 to confirm that the account is a valid account and the total balance is taken when food is delivered, if card has changed number then you new number maybe debited as its a contract and the banks are the middle man,

Another example of this is petrol stations, if you lose your credit card just after buying fuel, the card will be debited with the fuel amount after purchase.

The bank will apply the amount to the new account number, also some credit cards keep the link between the lost/cancelled pan number and the new one, this is so any refunds onto an old lost or expired card appear on the new card, same for preauthorised payments or continuous payment authorities (CPA's) which are recurring authorities like Netflix or subscriptions.

With flights if you have not got a contract with the company then no more funds will be authorised and the pending amount will 'fall' back to your available balance within 10 working days.

Do you have confirmation that the flights were cancelled and you have not entered into a contract to purchase the flights?

Ben8282

When a card is lost/stolen and a new card is issued with a new account number, the bank will determine which transactions are genuine and which are not. The genuine ones will automatically be debited to the new account.

Dobbibill

Cancelling a card does not automatically cancel a pending transaction.

A few good examples given by Westie already.

cheesetoast

Westie983 wrote: »

Do you have confirmation that the flights were cancelled and you have not entered into a contract to purchase the flights?

That's really useful thank you. Yes, I got an email from them saying that "We regret to inform you that your transaction could not be completed due to an error processing your request. We ask that you revisit our website and try to book again.", so it's pretty clear that they shouldn't be taking any money.