Forced to over-pay by the PostOffice

Agent_Ara

I'm struggling to find much help on this so here's hoping one of you could help me.

Last Friday I did a digital renewal of my passport at my local post office branch. I went to pay using my debit card and, as always, my banking app notified me straight away that the funds, £91.50, had been spent from my account. The teller then told me my card had been declined. I knew I had the funds and I even showed her my banking app balance with the £91.50 payment. She kept insisting I keep trying and that the money I had already spent would go back into my account within 2 hours. I was becoming more frustrated as I didn't want £91.50s disappearing from my balance with the promise of it being returned. I ended up going a few steps to their cash point and paying with cash. Low and behold, the money never came back to me. I'm now being told it's going to take up to two weeks to get my money back as there's a complaints manager looking into it. I've sent copies of all the receipts to the post office, surely this is a simple case of just giving me a refund rather than having a drawn-out investigation into it? I'd like my money back, I could afford the cost of the passport but I wasn't budgeting for £183!

user1977

Presumably they are going to give you a refund, but you can't always expect such things to be dealt with instantly. Sometimes you just need to wait for these things to be sorted out.

molerat

Is it a case that the payment has cleared from your account or that the transaction is still showing as pending and removed from your available balance ? You need to be clear exactly what has happened with this transaction.  There is no way a pending transaction would fall off in 2 hours, it will take several days and maybe up to 2 weeks.

bris

Title is a bit misleading, the payment obviously declined at their end but showed as a transaction at yours, this is a banking error rather than the PO's. The PO can only go on what the receipt printer spits out at them and this was a declined receipt.

You would be better complaining to the bank and get them to yell you why this happened.

born_again

So no actual money has been taken from your account. It is only showing as a pending transaction. NOT a debit on your statement.
As such there is nothing to refund. It will drop off in a max of 14 days.

mikb

Agent_Ara said:

 The teller then told me my card had been declined. ... I didn't want £91.50s disappearing from my balance with the promise of it being returned.

On a couple of occasions when my debit or credit card has been "declined" (usually for using contactless when they've decided today is my turn for a mandatory chip-and-pin) at PO Counters, they produce a receipt stating the value of the transaction, the date, time, etc, and that it was ** CANCELLED **.

Were you given this? That's your ticket to resolving it, so you don't have to rely on the vague promise of "no, we didn't get money, do it again!" -- I understand your suspicion, but I've never had any worries about paying again straight away given that receipt.

MalMonroe

Agent_Ara said:

I'm struggling to find much help on this so here's hoping one of you could help me.

Last Friday I did a digital renewal of my passport at my local post office branch. I went to pay using my debit card and, as always, my banking app notified me straight away that the funds, £91.50, had been spent from my account. The teller then told me my card had been declined. I knew I had the funds and I even showed her my banking app balance with the £91.50 payment. She kept insisting I keep trying and that the money I had already spent would go back into my account within 2 hours. I was becoming more frustrated as I didn't want £91.50s disappearing from my balance with the promise of it being returned. I ended up going a few steps to their cash point and paying with cash. Low and behold, the money never came back to me. I'm now being told it's going to take up to two weeks to get my money back as there's a complaints manager looking into it. I've sent copies of all the receipts to the post office, surely this is a simple case of just giving me a refund rather than having a drawn-out investigation into it? I'd like my money back, I could afford the cost of the passport but I wasn't budgeting for £183!

I don't understand any of this. You could have just done it all online, cheaper. 

https://www.gov.uk/renew-adult-passport

It doesn't cost £91.50 to renew a UK passport. Does it? Where did that figure come from?

You can do it online for £75.50, my daughter did this recently without any problem.

You'll get a refund, undoubtedly but it is going to be a while.

MalMonroe

mikb said:

Agent_Ara said:

 The teller then told me my card had been declined. ... I didn't want £91.50s disappearing from my balance with the promise of it being returned.

On a couple of occasions when my debit or credit card has been "declined" (usually for using contactless when they've decided today is my turn for a mandatory chip-and-pin) at PO Counters, they produce a receipt stating the value of the transaction, the date, time, etc, and that it was ** CANCELLED **.

Were you given this? That's your ticket to resolving it, so you don't have to rely on the vague promise of "no, we didn't get money, do it again!" -- I understand your suspicion, but I've never had any worries about paying again straight away given that receipt.

The transaction went through in this case, though, in spite of the OP being told that it hadn't. So there wasn't a *cancelled* notification because the transaction wasn't cancelled - so the OP paid twice and didn't receive any such receipt. Payment was made. Twice. And a mistake was also made by the teller, so there wasn't any such cancellation receipt to record a failure and the OP ended up paying a total of £183 instead of £91.50. Now OP has to wait to be reimbursed.

JCS1

MalMonroe said:

mikb said:

Agent_Ara said:

 The teller then told me my card had been declined. ... I didn't want £91.50s disappearing from my balance with the promise of it being returned.

On a couple of occasions when my debit or credit card has been "declined" (usually for using contactless when they've decided today is my turn for a mandatory chip-and-pin) at PO Counters, they produce a receipt stating the value of the transaction, the date, time, etc, and that it was ** CANCELLED **.

Were you given this? That's your ticket to resolving it, so you don't have to rely on the vague promise of "no, we didn't get money, do it again!" -- I understand your suspicion, but I've never had any worries about paying again straight away given that receipt.

The transaction went through in this case, though, in spite of the OP being told that it hadn't. So there wasn't a *cancelled* notification because the transaction wasn't cancelled - so the OP paid twice and didn't receive any such receipt. Payment was made. Twice. And a mistake was also made by the teller, so there wasn't any such cancellation receipt to record a failure and the OP ended up paying a total of £183 instead of £91.50. Now OP has to wait to be reimbursed.

Until the OP returns, we do not know if the transaction went through or just shows as a pending transaction.  

Manxman_in_exile

MalMonroe said:

Agent_Ara said:

I'm struggling to find much help on this so here's hoping one of you could help me.

Last Friday I did a digital renewal of my passport at my local post office branch. I went to pay using my debit card and, as always, my banking app notified me straight away that the funds, £91.50, had been spent from my account. The teller then told me my card had been declined. I knew I had the funds and I even showed her my banking app balance with the £91.50 payment. She kept insisting I keep trying and that the money I had already spent would go back into my account within 2 hours. I was becoming more frustrated as I didn't want £91.50s disappearing from my balance with the promise of it being returned. I ended up going a few steps to their cash point and paying with cash. Low and behold, the money never came back to me. I'm now being told it's going to take up to two weeks to get my money back as there's a complaints manager looking into it. I've sent copies of all the receipts to the post office, surely this is a simple case of just giving me a refund rather than having a drawn-out investigation into it? I'd like my money back, I could afford the cost of the passport but I wasn't budgeting for £183!

I don't understand any of this. You could have just done it all online, cheaper. 

https://www.gov.uk/renew-adult-passport

It doesn't cost £91.50 to renew a UK passport. Does it? Where did that figure come from?
...

You aren't thinking this through Mal.

For whatever reason, the OP obviously could not or did not want to use the online service and wanted to use the Post Office Check and Send service.  (eg I presume either they could not get a reliable photo or they wanted the PO to take a photo that was guaranteed to be acceptable for passport photos).  If you'd followed through on the link you gave above, you would see that it costs an additional £16 on top of the £75.50 standard fee.

Passport Check and Send service - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

[Deleted User]

MalMonroe said:

I don't understand any of this. You could have just done it all online, cheaper. 

https://www.gov.uk/renew-adult-passport

It doesn't cost £91.50 to renew a UK passport. Does it? Where did that figure come from?

You can do it online for £75.50, my daughter did this recently without any problem.

You'll get a refund, undoubtedly but it is going to be a while.

It does at the PO - https://www.postoffice.co.uk/identity/renew-adult-passport-digital