Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2014-02-11 06:38 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2014-02-11 06:38 pm
[ SECRET POST #2597 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2597 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 047 secrets from Secret Submission Post #371.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - titc ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Anybody here work in the banking industry?
(Anonymous) 2014-02-12 02:14 am (UTC)(link)I work helping callers complete retail transactions for an entertainment-related business, and every once in a while--more and more often recently--we get a customer complaint about an authorization hold on debit card funds due to an AVS mismatch or other error.
Now, I understand the security reasoning for placing such a hold on a customer's funds. But WHY in God's name does it take so fucking long for the damn things to clear, and why isn't there an industry standard way for a vendor to verify to the financial institution in question that it was a false alarm and get those funds released?
I've talked to more irate customers who have no clue how the whole thing works and who accuse us of double-charging them, or abuse us for being unable to do anything about it. Today one poor lady was in tears because she had something like eight holds on her account from multiple attempts to put charges through. And the first and biggest one, which was supposed to have cleared today according to her bank, hadn't. Some of the other things she said led me to believe this either triggered an overdraft or otherwise cost her a lot of money she couldn't afford to lose.
Why do they do this to people? Does it just not occur to these yahoos that having big chunks of their money tied up for days to no good purpose is going to screw with peoples' lives?
Re: Anybody here work in the banking industry?
(Anonymous) 2014-02-12 02:22 am (UTC)(link)Re: Anybody here work in the banking industry?
(Anonymous) 2014-02-12 03:52 am (UTC)(link)Another time I'd withdrawn a lot of cash because I needed to make a purchase and they sent me a text message asking me to confirm that it was in fact me who had made the withdrawal. Once I replied to that, it was fine.
I'm actually a little surprised to hear that some banks take so long to clear things like that since it obviously isn't necessary.
Re: Anybody here work in the banking industry?
(Anonymous) 2014-02-12 03:52 am (UTC)(link)The way authorizations are handled does depend somewhat on an institution's finance department, and also somewhat on the software that an institution is using. I worked for a bank whose software for some reason had a tendency to process auths twice for certain vendors, so some significant charges (such as hotel and airline tickets) would wind up triggering multiple holds, some of which would sometimes remain in effect after the actual charge had cleared. Our workaround was the manual removable of holds (many institutions do not allow for that, however).
On the other hand, authorizations can be wonky due to the way the merchant/vendor sends them rather than due to the way the institution processes them. For example, many gas stations have started sending auth requests for a pre-determined amount when a customer uses a card at the pump rather than at the counter. So, holds of anywhere from $50 to $150 wind up being triggered despite not matching the actual transaction amount. There are also merchants now that put debit transactions through as credit even when the customer has selected debit (saves the merchant on interchange fees), which triggers a hold rather than immediately charging the account. And there are other merchants whose systems, for whatever reason, send through multiple auth requests for the same transaction. To further complicate things, if a merchant delays sending through a request for actual payment (which is separate from the initial auth request), then a hold can linger without the charge actually clearing (this is typically something that happens with smaller merchants who reconcile their credit/debit transactions weekly rather than daily). I worked for a credit union where wacky holds were generally vendor/merchant-side, because both our software and our finance department were otherwise very good at pushing through POS/debit and/or taking care of incorrect auths.
So: if the customers having these problems tend to have their accounts with one particular bank or with a couple banks, then the problem is most likely on the banks' end. If it seems to be happening with a random assortment of banks, then the problem might actually be with how your company is sending through auth and payment requests. It may have changed, which would explain the sudden uptick in problems.
Re: Anybody here work in the banking industry?
(Anonymous) 2014-02-12 04:06 am (UTC)(link)That said, it's also true that bankers are mostly a bunch of assholes, so it'd be completely plausible that they just wouldn't care about screwing with peoples' lives.