Ticket Machines sometimes charging weeks later?

[elpasi]

I couldn't find a better forum for this, and it's to do with buying tickets, but it's not specifically about fares.

Over the past month or so, I've been getting really weird charges for some of my tickets when buying on my Debit Card from Guildford train station's automated machines.

I buy tickets most weekdays (with 16-25, off peak, it's cheaper than getting any kind of season ticket), and most of the time, the charge is posted to my bank account the same day, or the day after. However, on a couple of occasions now, the difference between the transaction date and the bank posting date has been in excess of three weeks (my bank provides both the transaction date and charge date separately on statements). In one case, I bought a ticket, made a journey, claimed Delay Repay, and got refunded prior to the original pending charge actually being taken from my account.

While, when all is said and done, they end up charging me the correct amount, and there's likely no issue with any of this, what the heck is going on? It's very rare for retailers to keep charges pending for more than a couple of days before attempting to take the funds, and it makes it very peculiar from a budgeting standpoint when I have all these random pending charges accruing and being taken in different months to the actual spend dates...

 

[Starmill]

That is very strange. You could try block booking the tickets online at Southern of you don't like it. This way if you don't use a ticket you can get a free refund as long as you didn't collect it.

You could also book the ticket online on your phone on your way to the station - I often do this on the TransPennine Express website, which then awards nectar points on the purchase (not that this has any great value).

 

[PeterC]

I have had a cheque presented 5 months and three weeks after issue but never encountered this much variation in cards since online proccessing was introduced.

Connections aren't foolproof and most POS terminals can run in offline mode and should be set to correct this when next online. It looks as if the TOC has no automatic process to do prompt batch updates if this happens.

(As an aside, when ATMs first became widespread there was a rash of double debits because bank staff often entered the corrections for connection failures manually despite the machines being programmed to upload the missing transactions when next online)

 

[Bletchleyite]

Fairly unusual for it to be that long, though I've had it take a week or so before. If it grates, perhaps investigate a bank like Monzo which will post the pre-authorisation as an actual transaction so you don't lose track of what you've spent?

 

[Bantamzen]

I've had similar happen to me in restaurants paying with portable readers. Is it possible that some of these transaction requests are being batched by the company bank then despatched en-mass to the customer's bank, and in some cases individual batches of payment requests have initially failed to automatically transfer? Its not unheard of for large batches of transfers to get stuck batch queues because of an issue with one or more of the payments in it, or even a fault with the software leading to someone having to inspect the batch to clear the payments.

 

[andythebrave]

Don't know if relevant but I had a number of contactless transactions take over 3 weeks to be debited while regular chip pin was normal around the same time. I don't use contactless any more

 

[causton]

Don't know if relevant but I had a number of contactless transactions take over 3 weeks to be debited while regular chip pin was normal around the same time. I don't use contactless any more

This should not be as much of an issue anymore as (simplified a bit!) more contactless transactions are starting to be actually authorised first (i.e. they check you have the money and tell the bank about the transaction straight away!)

 

[island]

The card scheme rules allow 30 days to post the transaction, even though it’s usually done within 3.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This should not be as much of an issue anymore as (simplified a bit!) more contactless transactions are starting to be actually authorised first (i.e. they check you have the money and tell the bank about the transaction straight away!)

An authorisation doesn't necessarily mean the transaction itself will be posted promptly, though. Some banks show authorisations as debits (Monzo does) which makes it easier to tell what you've spent (but makes the cards unsuitable for e.g. hotel preauthorisations, so if staying in a traditional hotel a separate credit card is sensible) but most don't.

And then sometimes there's a fault and it gets lost...I had a transaction at one of the Luton Airport fast-track machines that never actually posted, if I recall.

 

[causton]

An authorisation doesn't necessarily mean the transaction itself will be posted promptly, though. Some banks show authorisations as debits (Monzo does) which makes it easier to tell what you've spent .

True, I was meaning that, as you said, it's easier to tell what you've spent as at least the authorisation will show up somewhere.

Although many people do not understand the difference between an authorisation, and actual charging, and what it all means... I think more needs to be done to educate people on the process of it all.

For example, if people are using a TVM and pay by card and then the transaction is terminated (a print failure, they don't put their Oyster card back on the reader to top up etc), they say "Well you've charged me already!" - when you try to explain and say no, actually that's not possible, the amount has been 'put to one side', etc, etc, you get shot down...

 

[island]

You have no idea how difficult it is to explain the authorise, batch, settle process to a non-specialist...