Posted: 2/6/2014 11:57:55 AM EDT
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Not going to name them as I am giving them a 5 biz days to sort it out
Ordered kit "a" listed in stock for around $480 Place order they charge my CC for $480 same day 2 days after placing order get email stating that some parts in kit "a" are not in stock they have other parts for $40 more asking if I want to : A Wait until parts become in stock B Cancel order C Sub parts for additional cost I email back stating I wish to use option C and that " You may charge my card $40 to make up the difference" 45 min after that email my CC is charged $520 and there is no credit made for the $480 I email stating hey you charged me twice .. please remove the $480 charge Get an email back stating "Oh it will probably drop off in a few days" Am I a dick to not want to loan them $1000 when a product has not even shipped ? |
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It's probably just a pre-authorization. Most websites will automatically pre-auth your card to make sure it will go through for the total amount. But your card isn't actually charged until the vendor manually does it. Since they told you it would clear out by itself in a few days, I can almost guarantee that's what happened.
I wouldn't bother checking with your credit card company. They will tell you that both charges are there and valid, for some reason. 
We go through this all the time. A person calls with a similar issue, we tell them we haven't charged their card yet, and it's just a preauth that will expire within 2-4 business days. Then they call their CC company, or check their account on the CC website, and it says the charge was completed and processed. The CC company always tells the customer that they can't do anything about it, that the vendor will have to issue a refund. Then they call us again wanting us to issue a refund for a charge that we never processed and there's nothing we can do to clear out the pre-auth. We just have to wait for it to expire, and there's no way for the customer to confirm that it's just an authorization. To them, it looks like a completed charge, and the CC company tells them it is. It's mind boggling, really. I don't understand the system at all, but it is what it is. |
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I agree but the net difference to the customer of a hold vs charge is 0
from a merchant's point of view is the money yours or floating in the matrix ? I guess the asshole in this situation is visa as the other parties to the transaction don't benefit My other question would be I told them explicitly to add on the $40 not charge me for a new "kit" I would have liked had they done what I asked instead of billing me for a complete new "kit" as opposed to adding on the additional upcharge It's not the end of the world , I just thought most vendors didn't bill until item shipped |
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Quoted: I agree but the net difference to the customer of a hold vs charge is 0 from a merchant's point of view is the money yours or floating in the matrix ? I guess the asshole in this situation is visa as the other parties to the transaction don't benefit My other question would be I told them explicitly to add on the $40 not charge me for a new "kit" I would have liked had they done what I asked instead of billing me for a complete new "kit" as opposed to adding on the additional upcharge It's not the end of the world , I just thought most vendors didn't bill until item shipped This is why you should always use a credit card and never use a debit card. With a debit card, you are out the cash until the authorizations are cleared up, with a credit card you are out nothing while you wait.
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Checked my statement
I have 2 POSTED transactions as mentioned above ......not PENDING so those 1010101010101 are not in my account according to my bank so where are they in visa land or vendor land not a big deal just seems odd that they would do things like that |
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Quoted:
I agree but the net difference to the customer of a hold vs charge is 0 from a merchant's point of view is the money yours or floating in the matrix ? Quoted:
I agree but the net difference to the customer of a hold vs charge is 0 from a merchant's point of view is the money yours or floating in the matrix ? The money isn't ours (the merchant's) until we actually process/charge the card, AND batch out at the end of the day. Once we batch out, the transfer to our bank account is initiated. Until then, it's just an authorization that basically reserves the amount for us. It's designed to prevent us from getting a bunch of declined cards, since the website will automatically kick it back if you don't have enough available credit. Several years ago, when we first started selling online, our website didn't preauth cards and we would spend a couple hours a day calling customers to let them know their CC didn't go through. Quoted:
My other question would be I told them explicitly to add on the $40 not charge me for a new "kit" I would have liked had they done what I asked instead of billing me for a complete new "kit" as opposed to adding on the additional upcharge It's not the end of the world , I just thought most vendors didn't bill until item shipped They probably weren't able to break up the 2 charges without collecting CC info again. They never actually charged you in the first place, so they charged you for your complete order total one time ($520). They probably didn't have the ability to charge $480 and then another $40 separately (unless you gave them your CC number again for the $40 charge). Or, they may not be able to run 2 separate charges on a single order (our system has that limitation. If someone wants to pay for an order with 2 different cards, it's a huge PITA). It really depends on what type of system their using, but most of the time, the pre-auth can't really be edited or cancelled. They can go in and manually process the card for the new total, but the pre-auth doesn't just disappear. It stays on there until it expires, regardless. Again, I don't really understand why the system works that way. But we run into it often. Any order modifications or changes usually result in a pre-auth sitting out there for 2-4 days, while the customer thinks they've been charged twice. Quoted:
Checked my statement I have 2 POSTED transactions as mentioned above ......not PENDING so those 1010101010101 are not in my account according to my bank so where are they in visa land or vendor land not a big deal just seems odd that they would do things like that It drives us crazy, because that's exactly what happens. To the customer, it says the charge is finalized, but the vendor probably doesn't have the money, and one of those charges you're seeing is just a pre-auth. I may be wrong about your case, but this is something that we run into all the time, so I don't doubt the vendor's claim that the extra charge will fall off in a few days. It's ridiculous that there's not a better system to keep customer funds from getting tied up, but that seems to be how things work across the industry. This isn't really an unusual case, in my experience. |
