So I paid my credit card with Halifax this morning. Total cost, £13.05. At the exact same time another charge of £1,038.08 also got taken by Halifax. I mean the credit card only has a £500 limit so how this can happen who knows.
Thanks to Monzo this was immediately clear. I can even get it returned with an email from Halifax. Yet after a half hour on the phone waiting, I was told they need to wait for it to clear on their systems before it can be returned, then it will be a weekend, and a bank holiday, then a few days before it returns to my account.
Oh, and they don’t do any emails.
It just makes me hate the old way of banking so much. I’m down £1k for no reason and they just shrug their shoulders.
If the 1k figure was via Monzo MasterCard, could you not ask for an immediate chargeback and flag the transaction as fraudulent? (I mean, you didn’t authorise it…?)
Ah okay. I know nothing about this (I’ve never charged anything back) but I thought that if there was a transaction on your account that wasn’t authorised by you then that gets refunded sharpish.
It’s really frustrating when you’re the victim of the system…
At the same time another £1308.08 was taken and credited to your Halifax account
So two credits to your Halifax account, so the money isn’t missing, but your account is just in credit and need them to reverse it? (As well as explain it)
How on earth did that happen? Was it a fault in their system? If so, they’d surely have some liability for any fees you might incur as a result of their system fault,or not?
I have no idea. Neither did the (slightly unhelpful) lady at Halifax. She said “We haven’t had any reports of faults. I don’t know what has happened”. Then went silent.
It’s not even like it’s, say, 10x the amount owed, or double or in any way linked to anything. It’s oddly specific. It’s like someone else’s amount randomly put it.
I am thinking aloud now, but is this an unauthorised transaction? I know usually this is when your card is stolen but I absolutely didn’t authorise this. I must have some rights!
Yeah, as I said, I’m sure you have some rights, in a case like this.
What I would suggest, to give yourself some improved chances later on:
Give them in writing (can be email, just so that you have a trail) what happened, that you expect your money back, and that you’ll hold them liable for any charges resulting to you from this. That alone might speed them up.
Dispute the payment with your bank right away. (again, you want to generate a paper trail). Tell them you didn’t authorise the payment. Don’t let your bank get away with it either.
Make sure you keep records of any charges you incur as a result (late payment fees, bounced DD fees, overdraft fees). And if they refuse to reimburse those, I’d definitely not let that rest.
Well the bank is Monzo. The funny thing is that if someone has stolen my card and transacted £1k it would be Monzo who had to refund me without delay and investigate further. The only difference here is that I still have my card and I know where the money is.
Frankly it being on my credit card is as good as having it spent in Tesco. I can’t access it to pay my bills or rent etc.
I don’t think I will have too many fees from this, thankfully, but there’s a certain level of embarrassment having to tell people, like my landlord, that I’m going to be late paying rent this month. I’ve never been too great discussing money and to me having to go to companies or people with late payments is as bad as a late payment fee. I know that’s a little crazy btw haha.
And I’ve told Monzo and Halifax - I will be complaining in writing to Halifax too but Monzo have said they won’t do anything as it’s not fraud.
Btw - this is no dig at Monzo. Their customer service has been excellent in comparison to Halifax. Right now I’m on hold to get the transaction reversed and I’ve been on hold for 42 minutes.
Still don’t let them get away with it. As you said, it’s still an unauthorised payment, and this is what the FCA has to say about those.
In most cases the bank must refund the payment without undue delay and by the end of the business day following the day on which it became aware of the problem, unless it has reasonable grounds for suspecting that you have acted fraudulently.
Though to be honest the response from sending the FCA pages has made me feel like I’m suspect.
“If you noticed a £1k transaction why did you continue with £13.05?”
I literally didn’t. The alert for the £13.05 came and then I noticed a second transaction just prior to the £13.05 that I authorised. The suggestion being that £1k alert came up and I thought “Oh I must put an additional £13.05 on the same card before I report that unauthorised charge”
