I think this is one of the issues with instant notifications. With most banks, you wouldn’t have known any of this until they took the money on 16/01.
Maybe the fact that they had taken the money, and it being refunded led you to believe that the order was cancelled when they might just have been waiting for stock to arrive. As far as I can see, it’s an unusual situation, and you’ll hopefully get it resolved soon.
It’s not really a trick this is how it works you have two types of transactions.
One where say you are in a coffee shop and physically present. They are handing you the goods there and then. Some online shops will sometimes do this and then later issue a refund if not in stock etc
So paying at a petrol pump, or online shopping where the payment will only be collected or “captured” on shipping.
The “Auth” puts a specific amount on hold and gives the merchant a token back to then allow later to charge that payment method.
They can take any amount the hold just guarantees that up to that amount can at least be taken. They can take less than what they reserve, they can also take more but no guarantee the customer has the funds available.
When the holding expires the merchant can still attempt to capture but no guarantee that any funds will exist.
Thanks for explaining how this works.
So this is the general outline of the process. In case of Monzo it looks like merchants do have that guarantee and if there are no funds available Monzo does the merchants who are late a favour and resorts to an unarranged overdraft.
I spoke with the support (they get extra points for actually having read this thread prior to our chat, wow!) and here is what happened:
In this situation, Monzo are not ‘doing the merchants a favour’. They are legally obliged to complete the authorised transfer. They don’t have the option of saying “Sorry, there are no funds in the account”.
I can’t find the posts right now, but Monzo staff have said a couple of times before that merchants have an absolute right to claim the funds from a valid authorisation.
Unrelated to your situation, but this is also why Monzo stopped making it so easy for people to reverse pending transactions - they were finding that there were too many occasions where people were reversing valid transactions and getting in trouble later down the line when the money was claimed.
ETA: Thanks for updating us on what Monzo support had to say; props to them for doing a great job at keeping abreast of the issue and giving you a very good and detailed explanation of what had occured.
That to me looks looks like a pretty good guarantee then…
I think from the end user perspective this was a pretty messy experience:
I’m impressed that they’d read the thread!
I’ve sent them a link to it in the chat. Definitely top marks for the support experience.
Also thanks to the posters here for keeping me company, I’ve learnt a few things 
Yep all this.
The only time they can send that response is on the auth stage. So when you say fill up at a pay at pump and it’s requesting a hold of £99. Monzo can send back either a yes continue they have funds >= £99 or no reject, and a third response which is a partial auth so say you had £50 it would send that value back so the pump will only dispense to that max value. (Not that many PAP support this)
I guess the only real way to avoid this is to use a CC like Amex, they will remove the transaction from the bill if it didn’t correct before the next billing cycle.
Why would Monzo return the funds to me if they know that sooner or later the merchant will come asking for money and the money must be given to them? Instead of upsetting the buyer with an unarranged overdraft or a sudden disappearance of a sum of money why not keep the hold until the merchant either takes the money or cancels the transaction?
Alternatively invalidate the transaction once the hold expires. If the merchant decides to ship after that date it’s then their problem. If the merchant expects that more than this (standard?) length of time would be required to fulfil the order have a custom agreement and extend the hold time to what’s agreed.
So Monzo removed the option of reversing pending transactions by the buyers but still do this themselves…
Probably Mastercard rules
This is top notch. I’ve been critical of support before for not reading my messages properly, so I’m really happy to see this.
When it works properly, Monzo really is best in class for support.
Because they don’t know if they’ll come back for it.
You can blame Monzo or the retailer but you spent £600 and didn’t cancel the order before spending £600 again somewhere else.
As a general point, and not aimed at anyone specific, I always feel uncomfortable when folk pop on here with questions and the replies become personal about individuals’ financial decisions. Instead, what I think people are after is feedback on whether Monzo is meant to work that way, rather than a critique on their behaviour.
You could substitute Monzo with Halifax or HSBC the same outcome would have happened.
As far as I can tell:
In hindsight what should have have happened is to cancel the order with Lenovo, payment cancelled and the token is revoked.
Then spend the money elsewhere.
I might have understood this wrong but the bank in this case monzo is correct in releasing the held funds and the merchant is in their right to collect payment until instructed that the order is cancelled by the customer 
The only bit I can’t see is why the attempt to capture bounced and then had a different outcome when they attempted again. Either way it’s not Lenovo fault for wanting payment. And Monzo aren’t there to fend off attempts to collect valid payment. Just a bit of a crap situation.
This was explained by the OP in his follow-up post. The attempt to capture bounced because it was a new attempt and funds weren’t there. After that, they realised they could go back and collect from the original authorisation instead.
Interesting outcome really.
It reminds me of some of the comments previously about Amazon and UberEats, and likely countless others - but because they have a number of “merchants” (Amazon Music, Amazon Marketplace, etc) - they can and often do flip between merchants to get their money.
(Admittedly that was in the context of why it could be hard to block UberEats for takeaway but not Uber for Taxis)
Must be so convoluted trying to design payment systems (as a merchant) when your factoring in all these ways to deal with “but what if the payment fails”.
Either way, hope you manage to resolve it with Lenovo without too much difficulty.
I checked what Lenovo terms have to say about all that:
For purchases of desktops, notebooks, tablets and mobile phones, your credit card will be charged when your product is shipped.
I did not see this before because a) the order confirmation makes no mention of that, and, more importantly, b) I was charged at the time I placed the order, on 1/01, exactly to the minute according to the time stamps in Monzo app and the order confirmation email.
Then I have a shipping confirmation email from 14/01 where it says:
If you have paid by credit card, your credit card has now been charged.
Well, to me it looks like Lenovo’s fault then, after all. The transaction on 1/01 shouldn’t have happened. They caused the money to disappear from my account for 8 days without any intention of touching it. Once this delayed charge expired Monzo returned it to me.
When Lenovo assembled the shipment they ‘complained’ to Monzo that the money didn’t arrive and were therefore allowed (because it’s the law!) a fresh transaction on 14/01. However, they didn’t anticipate that their earlier shenanigans would cause them to lose the sale and by 14/01 the coffers were already empty and they couldn’t use that transaction to dig deeper. What I did not anticipate was that Lenovo would then come back with vengeance and recycle their first transaction to get to my overdraft…
This I suppose answers the original question.
But the merchant wouldn’t be able to start a new authorisation without the customer.
So I assume it was one auth, then an attempt to capture, then a second attempt to capture
You weren’t charged and debited though, the authorisation put the hold that money at the time of clicking buy. The pending and cleared appear the same, you need to click on the transaction and it has ‘pending’ until cleared.
It’s essentially ring-fenced saying this is still in your account but the merchant has the right to collect at least this amount.
I can’t see any shenanigans or vengeance.
There’s no humans involved here or emotions. The Lenovo staff ticks the box to say item ready to dispatch, this then gets added to a list to say now charge these customers. The tokens are then used to collect the payment, it’s all automatic.
After the auth which puts that money on hold in your account they don’t need to immediately need to capture the funds. Even when the pending time expires they still have the right to collect the funds. The only difference is after the pending time expires it’s more risky on the merchants side as they have no guarantee that the customer still has the funds available. In your case they tried to collect the funds and you didn’t have the funds. From what I can see they then attempted to capture a second time later and for whatever reason it went through.
Why it rejected the first attempt and allowed the second Monzo may respond but it’s not their job to bat away valid attempts to capture funds.
When you next buy something online take a look at the transaction in Monzo and it’ll likely have at the bottom “pending”