No doubt, John Lewis’ handling of the entire situation was awful (the email they sent me had several major red flags for being fraud itself; and as such would be very desensitising to some people).
But, no, they didn’t charge twice. An authorisation isn’t a charge - presentment is. And that’s the confusion Monzo can cause.
Obviously most people like the Monzo way, I just figured I’d show a situation where it could be very bad (as people would think they were double-charged, and it would throw balances off for a week). I really like @BethS’s halfway idea of putting pending charges in a different colour.
But, no, they didn’t charge twice. An authorisation isn’t a charge - presentment is. And that’s the confusion Monzo can cause.
As a user I couldn’t care less about the implementation details - that is a charge as I can no longer go and spend that money elsewhere.
To be fair this whole authorisation/presentment thing should be a relic of the past, there should just be instant presentments & refunds with no “in-between” state. Either you have the money or the merchant has the money. Simple and effective.
Agreed totally on this, it’s actually amazing to me that none of the major international payment networks have changed this - can you imagine how much business it’d drive? ‘Here at payment card network X, pending charges are a thing of the past’ - it’d be so good for business. Obviously hotels and car hire would hate it!
Not sure why hotels and car hires would hate it - either way they’re taking money as a deposit and preventing the user from spending it, just that now it’s made clear. It would also make it clear exactly when that money was refunded back.
Because they’d actually be responsible for handling the money, whereas right now they never take the money - they just put a hold on it. Being responsible for the money adds a whole new layer of complexity. Also, I’m not sure I’d trust them. A £1000 authorisation? I can deal. Actually taking £1000 of my money and having to trust you to refund it… no thanks!
In my experience, Barclays will not (unless you go in branch they said), as I found to my pain stuck abroad with minimal funds after the hotel’s self-check in machine failed twice (but locked funds).
That said, in addition to the idea above of extending the time before refund above, I’d like to increase the charge. Petrol station takes a pound out? A few taps and you adjust it to £40. The reality might be higher or lower, but it matches what you spent closer. I realize this is too much hassle for most, but if you’re on a tight budget watching the pennies it helps against overspend. Unrelated but similar, expected costs that don’t pre-auth (e.g. Anything from PayPal now it’s linked via DD, or stuff from Amazon) would be good additions (preferably via account linking).
In October 2016, Visa introduced new rules for pay at the pump terminals, stating that customers’ cards should be pre-authorised before they are allowed to buy fuel, and a temporary hold for £100 should be put on their account until they’ve paid.
As far as I’m aware… as long as the merchant updates the same authorisation or removes it there shouldn’t be an issue, some are lazy though and issue a seperate authorisation and just let the original expire.
The issue is the period between authorisation and collection. If I only have £60 left (in overdraft), spend £30 on petrol and they try to take £99 - that’s a day or two during which I have “no funds”.
In my previous situation, it was ~£150 authorised twice (the receptionist asked me to try the machine again) that the bank reserved but the check in machine failed to validate that the authorisation was made. Thus leaving me mostly broke until it cleared.
I’m not sure extra features on the feed would address this issue. I think it might cause more confusion for those that don’t quite understand auths and presentments wondering why transactions are different colours.
If you click into a transaction it does show as pending, especially in the sense of the exchange rate for foreign transactions.
We want to change how banking is handled and presented and I think differentiating between auths and presentments is too “legacy” and not moving forward in how your money is handled.
Whichever bank you use, you’re in the same position with available money, only you won’t always know who it’s being ring fenced for. We’re clear about that and we make sure that you’re aware of what’s happening with your account by showing the first communication about the transaction.
I can see it’s not liked by everyone, but I personally still don’t quite understand why.
But with Monzo, you do see everything that’s going on. As Beth says, the transaction details clearly tell you if it is pending or not. And a pending transaction that’s never presented shows a reversal after 7 days, so you can see what happened. With other banks, you wouldn’t see either – your “available balance” would mysteriously be lower for 7 days (or however long they give for presentment) and then mysteriously go back up, with no record of what happened.
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