I have noticed a new trend in the last 2 weeks.

From 3 separate companies, I have been double billed when making online purchases. Each time, I call the company and they have said "oh that's normal, it's just a pre-authorization that occurs before we actually bill you. Don't worry it will go away in a few days."

The first 2 times it took 10 calendar days to clear off. The third time just happened this morning so I don't know yet. In the past, pre-authorizations always showed up as pending charges, usually for $1, and never cleared as a charge.

Now they are showing up as legitimate charges. In fact, one of them occured before the statement close last month and the refund wasn't posted until 9 days later when the next billing cycle occured. I can foresee this screwing some people up using high utilization.

I was under the impression in the past that a CC company would decline a second duplicate charge from the same merchant, within a brief time period, assuming it was an error. I recall a few times it was not an error and a merchant had to change the amount by 1 penny just to clear the charge.

Am I really unlucky that this happened 3 times in the last few weeks from 3 different companies? Is it allowable by Merchant agreements? It has happened on both my schwab and chase cards so it's not limited to one CC issuer.

I would call my CC to complain but waiting on hold to speak to someone and then initiating a fraud complaint and dealing with paperwork is too much of a hassle as compared to waiting a week for it to fall off on its own.

It is just a dirty way to make people go over their credit lines since authorization uses available credit even if the actual charge never goes through

tripleB said:kloakndaggers said:It is just a dirty way to make people go over their credit lines since authorization uses available credit even if the actual charge never goes through

That's just it. This is NOT an authorization. The charges ARE going through twice! And they are staying through twice for one or two weeks until the merchant issues a refund to the CC company.

Send a draft of a lawsuit. Watch for a cash offer to go away.

I had a call from Citi's fraud department just a couple of weeks ago, because Vitacost double-authorized a charge. (Their site had an internal error on my first attempt, but I guess the auth still went through, and then my second attempt to place the order succeeded.) The charges hadn't even been processed yet - just authorized.

What CC company are you using? I'm surprised that Citi would call about a double-auth, but yours doesn't call about repeated duplicate charges (which were presumably preceded by double-authorizations).

tripleB said:kloakndaggers said:It is just a dirty way to make people go over their credit lines since authorization uses available credit even if the actual charge never goes through

That's just it. This is NOT an authorization. The charges ARE going through twice! And they are staying through twice for one or two weeks until the merchant issues a refund to the CC company.

I doubt they are doing it intentionally it costs the merchant money and problems with their merchant accounts in order to double bill people. There is no way it is worth the hassle simply having a high refund rate can get a merchant account canceled, let alone double billing cards.

The only one that might be doing this to you is your credit company.

ranchopedro said:the 3 separate companies are?

One was a textbook store, another rents online textbooks and the third was a textbook manufacturer (probably in the top 3) that I needed online access to a book for.

I used a combination of my chase and schwab with these 3 companies to get the negative results.

Shouldn't you change your name to.. "theman2yourleft"?

jokes aside, I haven't noticed anything like this with my AMEX, and I'm doing some heavy buying online for an upcoming trip of mine. Probably 10-12 orders over all.

theman2 said:tripleB said:ranchopedro said:the 3 separate companies are?

One was a textbook store, another rents online textbooks and the third was a textbook manufacturer (probably in the top 3) that I needed online access to a book for.

I used a combination of my chase and schwab with these 3 companies to get the negative results.Dear B^3, thank you for paying for my copy of the textbook for our class. You may not know who I am. I sat to your left during our first class. When you left your credit card out after ordering monkey sex 101 from Amazon, I took that to be an offer to buy a copy for me.
Sincerely,
Bob

scrouds said:You're missing a piece of the picture here.... Starting October 1st, Visa is charging what's called a zero floor limit fee. Its an extra fee for using a $0 authorization to "pre-authorize" your card. Instead, they are probably putting $ amounts in the auth so they don't have to pay the extra fee.

And its not a real charge, its never settled. Your bank is holding it 10 days waiting for a settlement, then dropping the authorization.

You're missing a piece of my picture here. The charges have settling, they are not authorizations, they are showing up on printed statements as amounts due in X days.

I called company 3 up the other day to inquire about this. They said that my card was accidentally double charged when the order ran through, they noticed it immediately, and put in a credit - but the credits take 3 to 5 days to go through.

I think this is all bullshit being done because of thie zero-floor fee. From now on if this happens I am immediately reporting it as fraud. Let Visa fraud waste their resources on this until they either force merchants to stop double-charging for authorizations to avoid fees, or until they remove the fee to merchants. Either way its unacceptable for them to pass this off on the consumer's lap.

"Mr Brian, this is the 5th time this month you are calling fraud."
"Well this is the 5th time a different merchant has double billed me on the same transaction. Maybe it's time to do something about it?"