Tesco takes payments from customers' cards MONTHS after they went shopping

Mildly interesting, especially since I was once affected by something similar

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Interesting.

They’ve said they’re happy to reimburse customers charges, which is good. What happens if a customer has gone into an unauthorised overdraft which now shows on their credit score? Can that also be corrected? I’m not sure how Tesco could arrange it.

Yeah, not much that Tesco can do in that case. In a well publicised case like this the bank might be willing to remove the mark for the report if you contact them, but as I was advised in the thread linked above: that’s why it’s always good to leave a few quid in the account.

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Thanks. I do the same, leave a small buffer. I also get my Noddle report each month and wondered what Tesco might be able to do for someone they’d ‘stiffed’ with a late transaction, it could be a disaster for a tight budgeter with an otherwise spotless record. Appreciate the info. :+1:

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Certainly (although “disaster” might be a bit strong). And another reason why I love my credit card :slight_smile:

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Noticed that just yesterday after taking 3 days before coming out of the account

Good luck to Tesco if this happened to me - most of my cards have either been cancelled or have no money on them, and as such they’ll be declined :wink:

EDIT: Actually, if it’s an offline presentment, would it be declined? How would that work for a closed credit card account, or a closed bank account?

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As far as I am aware, it doesn’t matter if you had new cards issued. The payment would have been authorised at point of sale and companies have 6 months to claim the money. The bank would just hand over the money as it was authorised by a valid card at the time. They are not making a new authorisation for payment.

Obviously, having no money in the account could be an issue and it would be for Tesco to follow up any lack of funds or, as you suggest, it may force you into an overdraft due to there being funds at the time it was authorised.

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My experience recently with Tesco is that the take payment for a delivery when they have already advised the delivery is cancelled. Happened twice in the last month.

I mean, I’m not really sure I feel that much sympathy. If you make a purchase you should expect you’ll have to pay for it. Sure, presentment months later is uncommon (and bizarre, as most companies want their money), but you still made the purchase - it shouldn’t be such a huge shock that eventually it will get presented!

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I’d be curious to see what happens when the cards are cancelled and the account completely closed - do they still get the money ?

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I see where you are coming from, and in a sense you are right of course. But I still have sympathy. Simply because after three months almost everyone will have forgotten about it. I’m assuming the vast majority didn’t even notice that the payment never left their account, let alone didn’t intend to pay. They simply forgot. And it seems a bit unfair that the customer may have to bear the consequences of the merchant’s mistake.

As I said: technically you are right of course, but there is also the other side, which I can empathise with.

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I get this POV but it feels a bit harsh on those poorest people (not scientific but you might guess that most people with close to £0 halfway through the month are not the richest) - they are going to get hit with fees and the only way for them to have known about it would be to either bank with a real-time neo-bank, study their bank statements exhaustively or carry out some sort of reconciliation of their accounts. In the case of any of them then yeah - they should expect a charge to come through and if they don’t have funds available then that’s their fault and they get what was coming. But for the other 95% of people it’s a bit harsh and I don’t blame them for it. I blame Tesco for being terrible and I feel they should reimburse any losses even if within the technicalities of payment protocols.

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I’m gonna take this a step further:

Those most likely to be affected by this (in the sense of overdraft fees) are most likley the less well-off. Those who may dip in and out of their overdraft. Experience says that these are financially less savvy. They don’t tend to check their statements religously (maybe because it’s frustrating). They’ll only notice "Oh crap, overdraft charges again :frowning: " They won’t even notice that the reason was a delayed payment. They won’t have read MSE which states that Tesco has offered to refund overdraft charges to affected customers (implicitly acknowledging that the whole thing was at least partly their fault). And that really sucks!

It’s easy for people like me, who have a house, can pay off my credit card bill in full every month, can heat the house to a comfortable temperature throughout the winter, to forget that (despite not going on foreign holidays every year, not buying a new phone more than once every 5 years, driving a 10 year old car) I am really one of the fortunate ones in this society. That there are loads of people for whom “shall I feed my kids or heat the flat” is a real, regular question. Who (you have probably read) have real anxiety the night that their wages are due to be paid. And that sucks even more!

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Cards cancelled shouldn’t matter as I stated before the debit was already authorised by a valid card at the time. They wouldn’t need to try and authorise the payment again. What happens with the closed accounts is a more interesting question.

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Tesco apologises after payment glitch pushes customers into red

Surely authorisations don’t stay live for that long?

Don’t funds get removed form available balances if it’s a pre authorisation as well which would remove it as a problem?

Sounds to me more like someone going through transactions that didn’t complete properly and manually putting them through (I could be completely wrong. Do not overly know the process for such transactions )

From what I understand authorizations aren’t actually required to take the money - unless there is obvious fraud an issuer should honor a presentment without prior authorization. Would love to see @RichardR’s insight on this!

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Just curious about this issue and if it would have affected Monzo users at all?

In my understanding of the way that Monzo works, your available balance is updated immediately, even though the transaction may not clear for a few days (or in this case - months!). Is that correct?

Does that mean that even if Monzo users had been affected by this glitch from Tesco, they wouldn’t have even noticed?

Would be interested to know!

The authorisations eventually expire and should fall off on Monzo. This is my biggest issue with Monzo, though… it presents authorisations as if they’re real. Thus, I THINK a Monzo user would have thought they got the money back - then been charged it again. When all that happened was the transaction was delayed being presented. Most people love it though, so no sense in complaining, it’s not going to change.

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