I spent almost £1300 online on some electronics which j have received. Yesterday the card charge got refunded, presumably because the vendor didn’t collect it. I’ve moved that money back into my savings pot.
What’s going to happen if they now make a new delayed charge for the £1,300? I don’t have that much sitting in my main current account as I keep as much as I can in savings. Will I suddenly be in an unauthorized overdraft? Will the transaction fail? I don’t want to leave the £1300 quid there for 6 months waiting for them to try again. Obviously I have no issue paying it if when they realise the mistake…
They have up to 6 years to collect the funds so I’d just leave them in your savings account and you’ll be notified once they’re collected. Which you can then just move the money into your main account.
What’s most likely to happen here when they try to take the money is that you would go into an unarranged overdraft.
Essentially there’s nothing to worry about. You’ll be notified and you’ll have enough time to bring your balance back up to zero before interest would be charged or your credit file would be impacted.
I’d rather chance that they’ve screwed up and they don’t come looking for it… unlikely but might as well be earning interest on the money in the meantime.
Or put the £1,300 into an Instant Access Savings Pot and get 3.2% interest? If they did take 6 years, you’d make about £270.00 for doing nothing. And if they did claim early, you’d have made something and have enough time to fund it without going into an overdraft (Instant Access)
Probably not relevant here, but PayPal (Pay In 3) do this very annoying thing of taking the money straight away, refund it the next morning (or the morning after) and then take it again when the merchant dispatches the item
Back in the days of available balance and the like I guess it wouldn’t matter so much, but it makes a right mess of the feed for and it is much harder to keep track of what is going where
Of all the companies to be weirdly old school about payments
and it is much harder to keep track of what is going where