I did not make this transaction on the 17th only on 16th. Monzo are the ones that have told me it’s linked to the CVC error. Barclaycard cannot tell me what happened because they have not received anything and cannot see any pending transactions. Ive phoned them twice and been on chat with them for hours. I’m going round in circles again.
No I don’t have flex unfortunately.
Did you give Barclays the auth code that Monzo gave you, so they could trace the payment from their end and confirm they won’t be taking it?
If you did and Barclays still aren’t playing ball, you need to make sure that they recognise you are making an official complaint to them about how they have dealt (or not, as the case may be) with your original issue:
You may need to make sure they properly register it as a complaint and give you a reference number, rather than try and fob you off without registering it.
It’s a shitty situation and largely of Barclays’ making, so I hope you manage to get them to acknowledge their error and make good.
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This should resolve itself within a few days if it’s been an error, or the payment will show in your Barclaycard account within a few days.
Not much either party can do about it I’m afraid.
If you’re unhappy with either or both, raise a complaint and someone will look into it for you.
Very difficult for us on a community forum without all the finer details of events and full clarity.
Hopefully you’ll have this resolved soon. Let us know how you get on.
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FYI Flex wouldn’t work in this scenario as it can’t be used for credit card payments
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The ‘fobbing off’ process is actually the stage I generally want to get to. Most banks (definitely including Barclaycard) have a ‘second line’ customer service who are there solely to prevent people saying they are going to make an official complaint from making one.
These generally are far better trained and motivated to solve your problems. And if they fix everything for me then I’m more than happy to ‘drop’ my complaint.
This isn’t correct.
Mobile companies, sure.
Banks don’t have 2nd lines of defence to prevent complaints, the FCA tells banks they need to make it easy for customers to complain.
They do, I used to work in one 
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Well that’s a very poor bank.
Unheard of in my journey so far between the UKs biggest and also Monzo.
2nd line support, I agree, not people “preventing” complaints as that means very poor front line training and call handling.
Quite shocked tbh.
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As I said their job is to solve your issue so that you don’t take your complaint through to the ombudsman. There’s nothing in FCA rules - obviously - saying banks can’t solve your issues for you before they go to the FCA!
edit: I mean FOS but anyway…
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Firstly I’m sorry this has happened to you, and that you’re in this situation.
Unfortunately the payments system is somewhat complicated and there are lots of ways payment errors can occur and it looks like one has happened here.
Essentially the payments process occurs in two parts - the merchant (in this case Barclaycard) authorises a payment with your bank (in this case Monzo).
When the authorisation occurs the money is ring fenced from your account. However the transaction is still pending.
Later on the merchant comes back and ‘presents’ the payment, at this point the money leaves a holding account and moves to the merchant’s bank account.
Monzo cannot send a payment via card without an authorisation - it’s impossible. So for some reason or another, and despite what the merchant might say, they’ve authorised two transactions. However they’ve only presented on one of these.
Is it the first or the second transaction which is pending?
Essentially what you need from Barclaycard is something that basically says “We will not be collecting payment X which was authorised on X with auth code XXXX”.
At this point Monzo will be able to reverse the pending transaction, and prepare a chargeback in the event that they do come back and collect the funds so that you don’t end up, potentially, in an unarranged overdraft.
If the merchant refuses to provide the information about the payment should automatically reverse into your account 7 days after the initial transaction.
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Your wording was wrong then.
As you initially said to stop customers making official complaints.
Official complaints can be made at any point and any time.
You’re referring more to 2nd line support or complaints handlers or sometimes management to resolve there and then when the complaint has been initiated.
Okay, well, wording aside you get the point I’m sure that by saying you are making a complaint, you can get through to the more experienced staff, and normally avoid escalation beyond that…
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Thanks for the reply. I can tell if it was the first or second attempt. They were made seconds of each other. I don’t understand why the payment isn’t being held until over 24 hours after though? Why didnt it show as pending when it happened on the 16th? I checked my Monzo account when it declined and nothing was showing apart from the message that appears in the transactions about the decline.
Are you saying Barclaycard have authorised the payment over 24 hours later themselves? If so surely that’s fraud if the CVC was incorrect.
No matter what I do Barclaycard will not provide me with proof. I have been going back and forth all day with them. Are you saying if I give them the authorisation code they should find it on their system. If they say they can’t find it then they must be lying to me in that case.
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Ive said I want to make a complaint at least 5 times to different people on chat and the phone. They said they can’t do the message/email because they can’t see the transaction.
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Hey Tiger,
Can Barclaycard see the second transaction you made?
Also have they logged the complaint for you or did they just say they can’t see the transaction. Regardless of their answer still persist to make a complaint so it is logged and then someone from the complaints team will investigate properly and liaise with other teams and contact you.
A couple of points to unpick here:
- If you tap on each individual Barclaycard transaction on your Monzo feed, which one shows as pending?
- it’s possible that Barclaycard aren’t aware of the duplicate authorisation - between Monzo and Barclaycard is a third party which is known as the “acquirer” and they might have had an issue which has produced a duplicate authorisation.
It’s difficult, without seeing your account, to know exactly what’s happened here. It’s worth saying that this has probably happened automatically as a result of something going wrong during the payment journey rather than it being a deliberate attempt to take two payments.
If Barclaycard won’t provide that info, try asking them to provide information which states they’re only collecting one payment and provide the details on that payment, including the last four digits of your card number. I don’t work in the team that deals with payment errors at Monzo, but that might be enough information for them to reverse this for you.
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Hi Tom. They can only see the one payment that has gone through and didn’t bother recognising I wanted to raise a complaint. I have been feeling lousy since I have Covid and trying to talk on the phone today after constant attempts on the chat took its toll on me. I will call them again tomorrow.
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It is the payment on the 17th at 10.30pm that’s pending. But both my payments (one attempted and one correct) were made early on 16th so I still don’t understand why that pending one can suddenly appear for no reason.
From my experience within Banking - Retailers and Fin Corps are always hesitant and persistent in not wanting to provide proof or a statement to show they won’t be taking a payment which is going to be difficult.
I would recommend taking the night to try to relax and tomorrow find a time when you are calm and well enough to call - log your complaint and do not allow them to shoot you down, explain your situation calmly.
Then hopefully in the next couple working days you will see either the payment automatically drop back into your account because either Barclaycard have reversed it for you via the auth code path, or have not taken the payment and it drops back automatically.