Curve card now refusing refund?

OceanSound

I purchased an airline ticket about a month ago using halifax clarity card linked to curve card. The transaction appeared on both the Clarity card pending transactions and Curve card as £96.01. That was on 07 March. On 11 March two further transaction appeared on Clarity card pending transactions. This time it was for £72.38 and £24.64. this is actually the cost of the ticket + additional baggage allowance I purchased. In the initial transaction they were both together.

A few days later I saw that the initial transaction of £96.01 had disappeared from Clarity pending transactions, while the other two transactions for £72.38 and £24.64 went through to become recent transactions. The £96.01 remained on Curve app for a few more days then disappeared.

Contacted Curve, who initially said this is a common practice amongst airlines. Apparently, the airlines takes an initial 'deposit' then sends an offline payment request later adding flight details. The CS agent also said:

This means we wait to capture the actual funds from your underlying card until the airline does. If this is in a separate transaction, the pending transaction will expire after a week. Since you've been in touch, we will speed up the process.

Our Payments team is looking into this and will be in touch as soon as possible.

A different curve team member then got back to me and said:

I have now refunded the extra charge and you should see this amount in your account in 2-3 working days.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused and please let us know if there's anything else we can help you with.

Yesterday I checked the clarity card statement and recent transactions and no refund had been processed. Contacted curve again to tell them. This is the reply I got:

Thanks for getting in touch.

To confirm a credit will not be seen on your account, the authorised amount was reversed so this transaction should have disappeared and your actual balance should be reflected.

If there's anything else we can help you with, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

THe '...to confirm a credit will not be seen....' is that business jargon for saying 'our previous message saying 'I have refunded the extra charge..' was not correct. i.e. we messed-up. I would have thought when someone says 'I have now refunded the extra charge....' it means just that. Does that need any more confirmation?

Although, I do understand the beautiful English language quite well, I don't have a full grasp of jargon. There appears to be no google translate for the the jargon language either.

I know it's only £1.01, but the fact is I was told a refund was done. Curve should honor this.

Drp8713

I think you have confused them.

They think you were complaining about the pre auth and actual amount both eating into your available balance.

You are actually complaining that the pre auth and actual are different amounts. That is out of their control. E.g. i do a food shop online and an item is a different weight, my pre auth might be £100 and actual £103.

You need to raise that with the airline. Are they foreign? It might be the difference in exchange rate?

OceanSound

Drp8713 wrote: »

I think you have confused them.

They think you were complaining about the pre auth and actual amount both eating into your available balance.

You are actually complaining that the pre auth and actual are different amounts. That is out of their control. E.g. i do a food shop online and an item is a different weight, my pre auth might be £100 and actual £103.

You need to raise that with the airline. Are they foreign? It might be the difference in exchange rate?

Can a customer confuse Curve like this?

Curve do have all the relevant info about transactions. I presume Curve would verify what the customer is saying before agreeing to a refund.

The transaction was in USD and I was not made aware that there may be a difference in pre auth and auth or initial deposit and offline payments. The only info available on the airline's website about offline payments is this:

Manage My Booking is available for online purchases via web and mobile only and not applicable for offline purchases (via travel agents).

Actually, you will be able to tell which airline it is if you do an online search for that quote.

[Deleted User]

OceanSound wrote: »

Actually, you will be able to tell which airline it is if you do an online search for that quote.

Or you could provide all the information rather than making everyone else do it for you?

OceanSound

!!! wrote: »

Or you could provide all the information rather than making everyone else do it for you?

I've had three interactions with Curve up to now. Not once did they tell me to contact the Airline.
How come you think/feel the name of the airline is relevant?

Terry_Towelling

Not sure if this helps you at all but when a retailer seeks authorisation for a non-sterling purchase the authorisation request has to be converted from the source currency to your billing currency so that your issuer's system can actually 'work' with it. That conversion will be done by Visa/MasterCard using the rates available on the date the transaction is Authorised.

When the retailer actually clears the transaction (could be days - or more - later) it will be converted again from source to billing currencies, again by Visa/MasterCard, again at the rate available on that day. Obviously the rates moved between authorisation and clearing and you have ended up paying a bit more than you thought you might have to.

Sadly, the authorisation request is not a promise that the transaction will be for that same sterling amount, it is merely the retailer checking that you have enough funds/account not blocked etc etc. As long as the originating currency amount is as agreed that is just the way it goes.

Had the retailer processed the clearing message as a single transaction, the sterling total would still have been £1.01 more than the authorised amount although, with such a small difference, the clearing message would probably still have matched with the pending transaction meaning no additional erosion of your available credit by having an unmatched pending transaction hanging around.

For sure, though, where the retailer splits the clearing message you are going to have the problem of the original pending transaction hanging around until it drops off.

Some might ask why the clearing and authorisation messages can't be matched by the authorisation code value. Sadly, the same value is often repeatedly used so that is not possible.

molerat

Sounds to me by "refund" they meant cancelling the pending auth rather than actually refund anything. IMO nothing to see here, normal foreign currency purchase risks !

Ben8282

I am surprised that what initially appeared as one transaction while pending was subsequently submitted as two separate transactions. Was this made as one transaction or two? Did you pay for the baggage in a separate transaction to the tickets?
However, that is not what is being questioned here..
As the pending GBP amount would have only been an estimate and would have varied according to the exact exchange rate on the day that the transaction was finalised, what you need to check is if the USD amounts correspond. If they do, then you are not due your £1.01 refund. There will almost always be a difference between the pending transaction amount and the amount actually charged with a foreign currency transaction. I am assuming here that you did not accept DCC.

callum9999

Have I misread this or are you seriously going through all of this hassle of trying to get a refund because you think you've been overcharged by 1%?

In addition to the exchange rate differences you've already been told about, did those new charges take place on the weekend? Curve charges a 0.5% fee if so, which could explain some of the movement too.

SnowTiger

callum9999 wrote: »

Have I misread this or are you seriously going through all of this hassle of trying to get a refund because you think you've been overcharged by 1%?

In addition to the exchange rate differences you've already been told about, did those new charges take place on the weekend? Curve charges a 0.5% fee if so, which could explain some of the movement too.

I have two automated payments taken from my card every month in different foreign currencies. The GBP pending amounts are often a little different to those of the final transactions.

From Mastercard:

Foreign exchange rates are specific to the date and time Mastercard processes the transaction which may be different from the transaction date.

I'd guess in the OP's case the airline put a 'hold' on the total amount, then pushed two transactions through a few days later: one for the fight and one for baggage.

If the underlying USD charge was correct, I wouldn't be losing any sleep over this. When it comes to currency exchange, sometimes you win; sometimes you lose.

warby68

It was only by the very last line of the OP that I realized OP was complaining about the currency difference and not the pre-authorization 'hanging around' so agree with other posters that the phone advisers could have easily been confused.

No a refund is not due because of currency movements - that is normal and your risk.

The pre-auth is really for the vendor's benefit and in no way a guarantee of the final amount. When Tesco take £2 for my online grocery shop, whilst it would be lovely if I could get the family shop in for £2, its extremely unlikely!