Pre-ordering authorising the full amount months in advance

Just to get back to this:

Have a look here:

Based on my reading of the medium article linked there, as well as some further research, it appears that - shock and awe! - ASDA was actually correct in blaming the bank: ASDA did indeed adjust the auth within 20 minutes. It’s the bank that didn’t act on it.

Looks like my indignation with all those petrol stations may have been a bit premature: It looks like at least some petrol station may indeed act correctly, and that it’s the banks (at least some banks) that can’t deal with that…

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It could be worse.

Once again a retailer blames a bank but it is the retailer not processing their transactions correctly!

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There must be a Monzo user who has bought some fuel from Asda who can confirm what is actually happening.

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Well, I’ve come across a major issue that may actually affect me now. I’m actually approaching my overdraft limit. However, I have a few pre-orders using CDJapan that have been pre-authorised, but not actually taken the money (and won’t until July, when I will have the money). I just spoke to in app chat and apparently Monzo will reject transactions based on the massaged in-app balance and not the actual balance that doesn’t include the pending transactions.

While I haven’t got any set in stone transactions that could be rejected, I am in London for a couple of days, and I’m gonna have to learn the PIN to my emergency credit card just in case :cry:

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The in-app balance is the ‘actual’ balance. Other banks call it the ‘available’ balance, but either way it wouldn’t be available for you to spend. At least, that’s my experience with Nationwide.

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With any bank, pending transactions are taken off you. You would have no more money to spend right now banking with Barclay’s, Lloyd’s or Halifax.

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Well, after further chatting in-app, I got the transaction that was due to be refunded forcibly refunded so I got that money back in my account, which is some extra breathing room for this weekend.

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Whilst that is true in theory, I don’t think I’ve come across a case where a bank or credit card provider has held onto an authorisation for 30 days before. I have absolutely no idea if that’s because I never had a case where that’d be necessary, or because other banks release authorisations earlier, so this is just an observation.

Well, my fear happened this weekend. I visited London to see grandparents and I hit my overdraft limit and had to use my credit card for some stuff. When I actually have about £50 or so of pre-orders authorised in advance it’s not ideal.

Also, other banks could reject payments, but I think what would actually happen is I’d go into unarranged overdraft, but because the transactions are pending, I wouldn’t actually get the massive unarranged overdraft fees.

Banks don’t really want you to go into unarranged overdraft, as more often than not it ends in the customer defaulting on their payments and it’s a huge hassle for them to recover it - most authorised but not yet presented payments actually do end up presented, so decreasing the available balance and then declining makes sense.

Maybe the solution is to only process the few exceptions (fuel pumps, which have their own category, and possibly hotels) differently and not count them towards your available balance?

When I was younger (like 16 or something) I bought something off paypal that took several days to be taken out of my balance, and so I spent a little more than I had (£4 more, in fact) and because this is before the days of £10 safety net, and I was too young to have an arranged overdraft, they wanted to charge me £28 for going £4 overdrawn. And, because the charges are based on an arbitrary day of the month that was only 2 days later, they wanted to charge me again if I didn’t get at least £4+28 to them that morning (it was a Saturday and they closed at 1pm). In the end I got them to waive the charges, but they were certainly keen on making money.

It’s like a decade later now, so I hope banks like Natwest reject payments rather than assume entering unarranged overdrafts, particularly for children. However, I am struggling to find anywhere that says they will reject payments like Monzo do except for mentions of an “Unpaid Transaction Fee” which is honestly even worse if that’s just “we will reject direct debits and stuff if you don’t have the money”.

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Well, today I just had the worst experience with in-app support trying to get the pre-authorisation reversed as it won’t be finalised for 3 months. Apart from waiting a day for a response, I got asked to send a screenshot of the email confirmation of the cdjapan order with the release date, and that wasn’t good enough so I sent a link to the cdjapan page saying they take the money on release date. I was told that Monzo will only reverse a transaction if the merchant have confirmed they won’t take it or it’s a duplicate payment, which is not true because the self serve exists to reverse a few types of pre-auths (but not for cdjapan sadly).

Still waiting for a response to my most recent message so not got my money yet…

EDIT: okay, there we go, they’ve returned the money to me. I’ve asked that whoever manages the self-service pre-auth refund thing be asked to add cdjapan to the list of merchants this can be done with. We’ll see if that happens…

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I’m not in work today but if you’ve not got this resolved by tomorrow drop me your email so I can take a look :ok_hand:

Ah, just saw your edit!

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Thanks :heart: just got sorted now :slight_smile:

It’ll happen every couple of months as the anime I watch releases new music fairly regularly…

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Is it worth using a dedicated credit card, so you don’t have this hassle on your live current account every time?

With a CC you’d effectively just be reducing your available credit with the pre-auth.

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See, the problem is, the merchant in question charges in yen and I have a credit card with terrible rates for payments in other currencies. I hear Halifax Clarity thrown about, but I can’t get any account with Halifax for personal reasons.

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Nationwide has a credit card that charges the straight Visa exchange rate for overseas purchases. But you have to have your ‘main’ current account with them, so it would require setting up some standing orders to move money into and out of the current account.

One other thing, though, is it worth writing to cdna-an and asking them to change their somewhat ludicrous charging strategy? Pre-authing 3 months in advance seems completely pointless if you then get the money released, as it might not be there when they come to collect. They’re not getting a guarantee that the funds will be there, and it causes a hassle. The whole thing seems like a waste of time and not using the card system as it’s intended.

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How about a dedicated TransferWise Borderless account and store ¥JPY in there, paid from that card?

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This is all working around the problem though. The problem is Monzo handles pre-auths as if it’s taken out of my account unless I moan about it in chat and get it “refunded” (released). This makes knowing how much you’re actually overdrawn by difficult. The point is, I will be paying for this product in a few months anyway, I don’t want to pay for it now. If I had Transferwise I’d have to keep money in there to pay for the thing when it eventually comes out anyway, same as on Monzo. At that point I might as well have it in a pot or just assume it’s taken out with Monzo as it already is. I can’t have a balance of zero in TransferWise and buy something to put money in it in December when the transaction finalises.

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