Will I get a refund after this quirky banking error?

vietnamica

Could you pls advise?

I used my Tesco Bank credit card to pay at a retailer website and encountered this error:

Twice the card was rejected for some reason.

But a few minutes later, my Tesco Bank record showed...FOUR transactions. So my card was charged...four times even though the real transaction did not go through.

I called Tesco Bank and they told me that actually "only TWO transactions were approved" by Tesco. 

I explained to them that the transaction did not go through. But Tesco said there was nothing they could do. They only gave me two transaction numbers so that I can call the retailer to explain.

I called the retailer. And of course they said there was no completed transaction on their website. They advised me that perhaps, after 24 hours, all those recorded transactions in my Tesco bank statement would be refunded to me automatically.

Do you think the refund would be returned to me automatically after this weird error?

Thank you

eskbanker

It's common for funds to be earmarked via an authorisation process, and these will typically show as pending in online banking, etc, but without necessarily proceeding to actual settled transactions, so it sounds like that's what's happened here, or have the transactions actually shown on a statement as fully confirmed rather than provisional pending ones, i.e. do they show on the actual balance or have they simply reduced your available credit figure?  If the latter then they should simply drop off after a few days if the transactions didn't go ahead....