Starling - Transaction disappeared from timeline

Spenditnot

Strange behaviour from Starling account today.

Made a contactless payment on Saturday which immediately appeared on the timeline as usual but this morning it disappeared and a new transaction for the same amount appeared with today's date. All evidence of the Saturday transaction was gone.

Messaged Starling and they said the merchant was probably having a problem accepting the payment so reversed the original transaction and reapplied it today.

I don't have problem with them doing that but I can't get Starling to understand that the timeline should show the original transaction as being reversed or indicated in some other way rather than just being completely erased.

Do you think I'm being unreasonable to expect that once an entry appears in the timeline it shouldn't just disappear without trace?

With my "traditional" current account, reversals and amendments would (on the very rare occasions they occurred) be listed with the reversal and the replacement transaction. My faith in this app based system has taken a bit of a dip today.

penners324

I've seen this happen with other banks. Most recently Barclays, a transaction was processed then cancelled whilst still pending, it the disappeared from the transaction list.

Same also happens with all foreign transactions, you see the gbp amount straight away, it then changes a couple of days later when the transaction is confirmed.

I'd say what you've seen is standard practice across the board.

JuicyJesus

Starling (and Monzo and other similar banks) tend to present authorisation holds as proper, posted transactions where the funds have settled. The issue with this is that, as in your case, authorisation holds can expire if not claimed in time, or be superseded, or reversed without trace. 99/100 it's fine, as the transaction posts before the authorisation expires. 1/100, you get situations like this where it doesn't.

It's both Starling's fault here and it isn't. Starling chose to present non-finalised transactions as finalised, leading to this confusion; Starling also didn't make authorisation holds work this way, they're just integrating them as best they can.