"Ghost" transactions - money trapped in the ether!

DullGreyGuy

Piranesi said:

eskbanker said:

Piranesi said:

the money leaves your account, and you have no option but to "wait it out" for the money to bounce back?

The money won't have left your account as such - it'll simply be there in a ring-fenced state, i.e. your actual balance will be unaffected but your available balance will be reduced temporarily.

I've never heard of unused authorisation holds taking 30 days to work their way out of the system, it's normally more like a week or two.  It's undoubtedly irritating when it happens, but difficult to expedite a resolution as you've found.

Thanks Eskbanker. I have been on the phone to three different Currys customer support people who have quoted three different timelines to me: 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days. The bank quoted up to 30 days. It seems to be an extremely disruptive quirk in the banking system, and seems strange to me that merchants aren't held to account when it happens considering the fault appears to be due to their websites crashing at the payment stage.

The timescale is set by your bank not the merchant which is why Curry's wont know the timescale for each and every bank in the world. 

Website failures are not the only reason why an authorisation doesn't go on to be collected, whenever you hire a car or stay in a hotel you normally do an authorisation for the excess or a per day amount and those only go on to be collected if you have an accident or if you run off with the TV from your hotel room etc. 

It would be nice if there was a simple mechanism that merchants could use to confirm the authorisation could be released but firstly that would require a global solution and so very hard to implement with no commercial benefit for anyone. Secondly in the case of a website crash it may not even work if the failure means the authorisation wasn't captured to be able to then be released. 

born_again

DullGreyGuy said:

Piranesi said:

eskbanker said:

Piranesi said:

the money leaves your account, and you have no option but to "wait it out" for the money to bounce back?

The money won't have left your account as such - it'll simply be there in a ring-fenced state, i.e. your actual balance will be unaffected but your available balance will be reduced temporarily.

I've never heard of unused authorisation holds taking 30 days to work their way out of the system, it's normally more like a week or two.  It's undoubtedly irritating when it happens, but difficult to expedite a resolution as you've found.

Thanks Eskbanker. I have been on the phone to three different Currys customer support people who have quoted three different timelines to me: 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days. The bank quoted up to 30 days. It seems to be an extremely disruptive quirk in the banking system, and seems strange to me that merchants aren't held to account when it happens considering the fault appears to be due to their websites crashing at the payment stage.

The timescale is set by your bank not the merchant which is why Curry's wont know the timescale for each and every bank in the world. 

Website failures are not the only reason why an authorisation doesn't go on to be collected, whenever you hire a car or stay in a hotel you normally do an authorisation for the excess or a per day amount and those only go on to be collected if you have an accident or if you run off with the TV from your hotel room etc. 

It would be nice if there was a simple mechanism that merchants could use to confirm the authorisation could be released but firstly that would require a global solution and so very hard to implement with no commercial benefit for anyone. Secondly in the case of a website crash it may not even work if the failure means the authorisation wasn't captured to be able to then be released. 

Timescale is set by card providers. banks have no say in these 👍

eskbanker

born_again said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Piranesi said:

eskbanker said:

Piranesi said:

the money leaves your account, and you have no option but to "wait it out" for the money to bounce back?

The money won't have left your account as such - it'll simply be there in a ring-fenced state, i.e. your actual balance will be unaffected but your available balance will be reduced temporarily.

I've never heard of unused authorisation holds taking 30 days to work their way out of the system, it's normally more like a week or two.  It's undoubtedly irritating when it happens, but difficult to expedite a resolution as you've found.

Thanks Eskbanker. I have been on the phone to three different Currys customer support people who have quoted three different timelines to me: 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days. The bank quoted up to 30 days. It seems to be an extremely disruptive quirk in the banking system, and seems strange to me that merchants aren't held to account when it happens considering the fault appears to be due to their websites crashing at the payment stage.

The timescale is set by your bank not the merchant which is why Curry's wont know the timescale for each and every bank in the world. 

Website failures are not the only reason why an authorisation doesn't go on to be collected, whenever you hire a car or stay in a hotel you normally do an authorisation for the excess or a per day amount and those only go on to be collected if you have an accident or if you run off with the TV from your hotel room etc. 

It would be nice if there was a simple mechanism that merchants could use to confirm the authorisation could be released but firstly that would require a global solution and so very hard to implement with no commercial benefit for anyone. Secondly in the case of a website crash it may not even work if the failure means the authorisation wasn't captured to be able to then be released. 

Timescale is set by card providers. banks have no say in these 👍

Surely 'bank' was legitimately being used as shorthand for 'card provider' (in the context of a debit card transaction), or are you saying it's the card schemes who set the rules?

born_again

Visa/Mastercard that set the timescales.

screech_78

Usually takes 5 working days. So a week at most. 

paul2409

Sorry for commenting on an old thread but I am also with starling , I placed an order with Claire's accessories 3 weeks ago and it asked me to go to starling app to verify my payment , I did this and immediately the money was taken I returned back to Claire's payment page and had a " sorry there has been an error , your order could not be created , you have not been charged " , on starling it says If it is not a hotel or car hire i would get it back in 8 or less days, on day 21 now so I contacted starling customer Service who told me that oddly Claire's had requested the payment as an authorisation so I would have to wait 30 days for it to bounce back if uncollected. Or I can get Claire's to confirm date , time order number and the fact it has been cancelled and won't be collected , Claire's has no customer service and as an order was never created wouldn't know what I was talking about anyhow , starling is the only bank I have ever had to wait 30 days with though , it is kinda of annoying but I guess I will just have to wait the 30 days. 

Skiddaw1

It's happened to us and it took around 30 days for the money to bounce back (Nat West) so it isn't just Starling.