Fraud (disputed) credit card transaction with Lloyds

What UK disputes staff should be doing is complaining to Visa and MasterCard about this practice - not to stop it but to have it properly administered and regulated.

The AFD will pre-authorise the maximum amount it can dispense and then authorise the actual amount dispensed and that can lead to more of the available balance being ring-fenced than is appropriate.

The process should actually work in one of two ways, and this is the basis of the complaint. Either, the pre-authorisation for the maximum allowable should stand and cover the actual amount dispensed (which will be less and therefore the authorisation amount will cover it) or (and this would be the preferred solution) the AFD will seek authorisation for both the maximum allowable (the pre-auth) and the actual amount dispensed, but must reverse the pre-auth immediately prior to seeking authorisation for the actual amount.

Any other method will cause problems, and anyone analysing/devising/approving the auth rules for AFDs should have spotted this problem long before the process was adopted. Obviously, if the French process is derived from domestically-approved processes and isn't part of any international rule set, getting them to change their ways is going to be difficult (as it ever was) but that's what card companies should employ rules experts to do.

That's how it worked in my day (groan, grumble & general granddad noises).