Argos Charged Me Double and No Order Was Taken

LadyLeofric

I am hoping someone can advise me of my rights on this [complex] matter... 

On Saturday 21st November, I made a large purchase through the Argos website (a laptop £399.99). On paying, I used an Argos voucher for £24.99 and PayPal to pay the rest. Everything seemed fine at first (booked for Click and Collect at a local Argos store the next day) but when the payment process returned me to Argos, there was no order confirmation. 
I contacted Argos Chat Support who stated they hadn't taken the money for it, so it hadn't been ordered and instructed me to pay again to complete the order. 

I followed Argos's instructions. The same thing happened - Argos stated the payment hadn't gone through again! There was no order placed as far as Argos was concerned. 

When I logged in to my PayPal account, there were two Pending payments due out and all my PayPal funds that were previously there were gone (money from family members towards the laptop)! 

Worse than the PayPal balance of zero, I have Pending Charges in my bank account and I can't use my own money until it is sorted out.  

So now, I can't buy the Birthday Present (that was the £399.99 laptop order), nor can I pay essential bills or living expenses, because the money has been taken as far as my balance is concerned (-£375 I need to live off till after Christmas). 

These "Pending" charges have used up all my benefits for this month as well as the money given to me towards the Birthday Present. There is no money left that I can use to live off! I do not know people I can borrow this much money off to tide me over. I will not be able to pay my Direct Debits and will incur charges and bad credit ratings...  

Both Pending Argos payments have the same Invoice ID within my PayPal account. 

The first pending transaction used the £24.99 gift card, £240.10 PayPal balance and £134.90 bank funds (£399.99)

The second pending transaction used £375.00 from my bank (so they still accepted the gift card with this order). 

Argos Chat Support told me that Argos cannot cancel these "pending charges" as they have no order number and that any pending charges will automatically be voided after 30 days! Argos also told me that PayPal would have to cancel them... I contacted PayPal who said: 

Welcome to PayPal Messaging. I'm **** and I'm glad to assist you with your concern today. I understand that you contacted us about cancelling a transaction. Don't worry I'm here to help. We don't have the right to cancel it since it is an agreement between you and the merchant. You can’t cancel this authorization, but the merchant will be able to cancel it for you. I highly suggest to get in touch with your merchant and ask them to cancel it. If your payment’s status is “Pending” in your transaction history, contact the merchant and ask them to cancel the authorization. If the merchant has already accepted your payment and the payment’s status is “Complete,” it can’t be cancelled. 

How can I get these pending transactions cancelled? Who is responsible? Is this even legal (considering I have not even got the laptop and have no chance of receiving it as the item is sold out)? 

I can't cope for 30 days with no money at all. 

Sandtree

They haven’t taken any monies it’s just all ringfenced so that it can go through if the merchant requests. Clearly something has gone wrong in the communication between the Argos and PayPal servers resulting in the authorisations being given but not recorded by Argos (either side could be to blame).

You will need to persist with trying to find the appropriate person at Argos who has the authority/access to be able to release the authorisations. Your average call centre agent isn’t going to have the log in details obviously and it’s one of those rare things that don’t happen often enough to build a button for. 

Lip_Stick

The pending charges will be released shortly, maybe in a few days time. What has happened is that the money has been ring fenced for when Argos take it, which they won’t.

I believe you can speak to either Argos or the bank to have the pending amount removed, but can’t remember which one. I think it might be Argos, who then have to speak to the bank, which of course will take time.

I had that happen with Asda once when for some reason a transaction wouldn’t go through for a gift card. The woman asked me to try again, and again until giving up. By the time I left the store my account had £75 pending. A few days later and it was back on.

I’m unsure if you suffer financially because of this, e.g. go overdrawn and have charges, whether you can be compensated. I expect so, but am not 100%.

born_again

Ringing your bank & explaining the situation may get the pending transactions removed. But you will be warned that while that free's up the funds. It does not remove the authorisations, so they can still debit.

jon81uk

born_again said:

Ringing your bank & explaining the situation may get the pending transactions removed. But you will be warned that while that free's up the funds. It does not remove the authorisations, so they can still debit.

There may also be issues because it is PayPal making the authorisations not Argos? Although I don't know if that actually makes a difference but it does add an extra layer.

This is one reason why I would not choose to use PayPal for large transactions with retailers. If you paid with card direct with Argos at least it wold be their payment processing and there wouldn't be any possibility of the authorisation not coming back from PayPal.

LadyLeofric

Thanks for all your replies. 
The payments are still pending in PayPal and my bank as of today (26th November), but I had an email from Argos Customer Support after I filled in a feedback/review form on their site: 

As these survey responses are logged purely as feedback, if you did need to speak to one of the team regarding an issue you are having, please respond to this email with your order number, name, address and details of how we can help you further. 

So I've emailed them back with all the information and am just waiting their reply.  

I'll let you know what happens with them once they reply. 

born_again

By time they reply they will have dropped off.
They can sit there for up to 14 days, but usually drop off sooner.