Pending transaction (who’s at fault?)

michaelc93

Hi there guys and gals.
I’ve just got a quick question that I hope can be answered by the people on this forum.
I currently work at a petrol station and we have feature that gives you three option to “pay at the pump” instead of coming into the shop which is a good idea in theory but sometimes we have the issue of every now and again it’ll either decline a person for payment on the pump and still have a pend on the £100 even though they put no fuel in or they’ll stick let’s say £20 but it’ll pend the £100 then at a later date the £100 will stop off and they’ll be charged accordingly.
who’s at fault or to blame for the pending scenario as whenever I try to speak to management at my place of work or the bank they’re both don’t really want to take the blame and blame one another.
thanks.

molerat

It is no ones fault but your company isn't helping by requesting the stupid £100 hold when I suspect the majority of spends are below that value.  Most petrol stations take £1 hold so if their is a decline it won't cause the cardholder problems.

Carrot007

molerat said:

It is no ones fault but your company isn't helping by requesting the stupid £100 hold when I suspect the majority of spends are below that value.  Most petrol stations take £1 hold so if their is a decline it won't cause the cardholder problems.

I'd say in this and any case like this it is 100% the companies fault.

1. As you said it is a stupid policy.

2. The hold can easily be removed but the company has to tell this to the bank. They can't/won't becuase their systems were not designed with this in mind and so it would cost them to much time/money to deal with. The banks are set up to deal with this but companies are not.

This is why you should always use a credit card nowhere near the limit paid of with you bank every month. Of course the people who get hit with the problems this causes are unfortunatly the ones least likely to get a good credit card.

born_again

The fault is down to the retailer as their system should reverse the auth when declined. Retailer blames bank, as most of the time staff on till have no idea how banking systems work (and why would they). All they can see is a decline, so as far as they go that is the end of the matter.

Visa/Mastercard are the ones that have set the £100 pre-auth. To bring it inline with Europe where it is £120 Euro's.

But I have yet to use a petrol station that does. But I tend to only use Sainsburys or Morrisons.

They tried it about 3 years ago and have to rescind it due to complaints. As people found all their available funds were used up.

username

If the client doesn't have the required £100 or wishes not to have the hold on the £100 on the account for the day or so (transactions are usually settled overnight and the correct fill amount is debited) then they should fill accordingly to what they have in their account and/or however many litres to the funds on their card can allow and pay the exact amount inside, if they are on such a super-tight budget.

The shop should be more explicit that using the pay at pump will put a £100 hold on the card, but will be adjusted later to the fill amount overnight.

Whoever said the comment about using a credit card for fuel is correct, in all my 10 years+ of driving, I have never filled up using a debit card.

Avoids this situation and the correct cost for the fill is billed to the account by the time the statement is produced by the card provider.

Carrot007 said:

2. The hold can easily be removed but the company has to tell this to the bank. They can't/won't becuase their systems were not designed with this in mind and so it would cost them to much time/money to deal with. The banks are set up to deal with this but companies are not.

Exactly. And also can you imagine what kind of a hole it would open - you would no doubt get some unsavoury people trying to remove the hold even though they had filed up with the product, trying to claim they hadn't etc.The cashiers don't need this kind of additional grief, and nobody in line wants to be stuck behind someone arguing the toss with the person behind the counter.

michaelc93

Thanks for the replies shame I can’t print out any of your words of wisdom on the matter for me and  colleagues as some of them are as dumbfounded as me on the problem that it ensues and it turn we then misinform people or look like idiots as we don’t have a clue 🤦‍♂️

mab3000

The way pay at pump transactions are processed are soon going to be changing, at least for Visa cards anyway 

https://www.visa.co.uk/pay-with-visa/pay-at-pump.html

Once these changes come into play this should prevent this issue happening. 

Edit: appears the same thing is happening with Mastercards too 

https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en-gb/personal/ways-to-pay/pay-at-pump.html

dunstonh

who’s at fault or to blame for the pending scenario as whenever I try to speak to management at my place of work or the bank they’re both don’t really want to take t

No-one is to blame.  it's just a quirk of the system.

However, if you really must apportion some blame, then the retailer is responsible. Not the bank.   Strictly speaking, a pending transaction is an earmark against the account telling the bank/card provider that a transaction of that amount is coming.  However, it is just the way it is but,as mentioned above, it is going to change for some.

The earmarking system was around in the 1980s.  It was a way to bring protection to the card providers/banks because the paper slips from the old slot machines would often take over a week to get processed.   So, transactions that needed approval got earmarked.    I was working at a bank back then and the bank has the ability to clear the earmark. However, it was rarely used as it tended to be only used for the better quality customers and better quality customers don't leave low amounts in their bank account where it could cause a problem.

username

dunstonh said:

The earmarking system was around in the 1980s.  It was a way to bring protection to the card providers/banks because the paper slips from the old slot machines would often take over a week to get processed.   So, transactions that needed approval got earmarked.    I was working at a bank back then and the bank has the ability to clear the earmark. However, it was rarely used as it tended to be only used for the better quality customers and better quality customers don't leave low amounts in their bank account where it could cause a problem.

Interesting to hear. It's like how they used to have cards which allowed offline auth and also have a cheque guarantee, so in the event that there was no connection to the 'outside world' the card would work fine and unlikely to be declined.

Very different these days, pretty much all cards phone home regardless of method of transaction. In ye early days contactless was also offline for a lot of the time.

A few years ago they forced it all to be online processing and it was obvious they did for those that had card terminals that were connected to a phone line and dialled up. Just as slow as a chip transaction. Anyway, I digress!

dunstonh

Back in the early years of it coming into branches, the VISA system only worked in dollars.  So, the earmark was never the same as the actual transaction but a value that was converted to dollars by VISA and then back to Sterling by the bank but it didn't use the same exchange rate.  Later on, the earmark report gave the retailer but the currency issue was still there and as earmarks were relatively new and stayed on a bit longer than they do today, you would often.  So, you could tell a customer that there was an earmark from xyz for £xxxx but the amount never matched what they actually spent.  That issue obviously has long gone.

This is back in the days where there was only one computer in the branch and its display was a single orange line and was the size of an old desk.  You had to insert command lines.  However, as banking was regimented at the time, you had to write the command you wanted to type on a special slip, initial it (and your initials style - sig like -had to be unique for the branch) and then you had to find someone of a certain grade to counter initial the slip to verify the command line was valid and authorised and then hand it to the cards clerk to process on the computer and the slip was retained. Probably for hundreds of years had it not been for the data protection act 1994.

flo22

dunstonh said:

This is back in the days where there was only one computer in the branch and its display was a single orange line and was the size of an old desk.  You had to insert command lines.  

Thanks for bringing back fond memories of B80s and B90s