Had an issue where Safeway stole $230 out of my account when paying for groceries. Don’t worry, this is a FQ not a rant. I immediately noticed it on my receipt and customer service refunded the charge back onto my card. Yes, I am an idiot and should have asked for it as cash to avoid this problem. I know that the credit doesn’t go through until the batch is run that night. But here I am sitting here the next day with no money back. In fact, there is no indicator that I even got a credit. And we all here the stories that when a merchant gives a credit it takes 3-5 business days to go through. So my question is: why in 2022 does it take so long for electronic transactions to go through. I understand holding it until the batch is run to account for voids and what not, but why is it that my debit card transactions did not get finalized (both the payment and the credit) this morning as the Safeway transactions ran through their system. Why if an online retailer give me a refund does it take days and not less than 24 hours?
I would say the real reason it’s the steal a penny from everyone. For the victim it usually is not that big a deal, but for the perpetrator those adds up. So it’s to their advantage to delay this, and don’t get too much pushback, so they keep doing this.
You may be able to report it as fraudulent charge, which the CC company should remove it, but it has to be posted and not pending.
kanicbird, I totally agree IF it were calling an online retailer and they have to “process” the return. But they ran the credit less than 5 minutes after they charged me. The charge is still processing and the credit is not in evidence but has been theoretically in the system since yesterday afternoon.
I’m not sure if debit cards work this way, but checks take over a week to actually get fully processed even if the money shows up in your account sooner. You may heard of scams where people get a fake check from a scammer, cash it, and send some part of it to the scammer. Then 7-10 days later the bank discovers the check is fake and the person has to pay the money back. Even if you get the money right away, that may be sort of an advance for convenience because 99.99% of the time everything goes fine. Perhaps it works the same with debit cards. Even though the initial transaction seems instant to you, it may actually take a few days for all the processing on the backend to complete. Perhaps the credit is not issued until the initial transaction has fully completed.
It may also be related to anti-fraud in general. A fraudster might get an extra $200 in cash from their debit card, cancel the transaction, get another $200, cancel the transaction, etc. If the credit was instant, the fraudster could potentially keep getting $200 over and over on the spot without having their bank balance go all the way down. Or there may be other scams like that they are trying to prevent. Having to wait several days between the transaction and credit may limit the ability for scammers to exploit the system.
My information is dated, but maybe/probably not obsolete.
In business, I worked with two IT executives (they were vendors for very large companies with whose systems we were integrating).
One told me that FedEx had directed his company to be extremely aggressive about incorporating functionality (into their software, provided to larger customers) that facilitated billing, but to do nothing to facilitate a customer making claims.
Another had been CTO (or something) for a giant rebate clearinghouse based – IIRC – in Utah. It was the kind of rebate that takes “8-12 weeks to process.” He said the processing was virtually immediate, but the time frame gave them a chance to ‘fail to process’ a rather closely-manipulated percentage of those rebate claims, knowing that the majority of claimants would forget.
If you were conscientious and logged onto their website to check the status of your rebate … almost as if by magic … it would be processed relatively quickly.
There was also a US Congress Critter (Carl Levin ?) who railed against the major banks/credit card issuers for making it remarkably easy for you to contact them *when their (ie, the bank’s) money was at stake (eg, lost/stolen card), but made it impossibly difficult to even find a phone number to call if the issue was one that overwhelmingly affected you, the customer.
As I often say about politicians, they’re largely not stupid, but a shocking percentage of them are evil.
This is what people get when they blindly support a Corporatocracy in the US. If you’ve never worked on mahogany row of a large enterprise, you simply have no idea …
So it probably is still some sort of “steal a penny” scenario. We just don’t know which actor in the transaction chain sits on the money for how long.
Seems unnecessary. In Australia the PayID system lets you hook up your account to a mobile phone number or an email account. Anyone can instantly transfer funds to your account from any other institution that allows it. I sent my son money recently and it was in his account while we were still talking on the phone.
With these sorts of transactions, it may have been in his account, but there may have been a hold on it for a few days. Sometimes your balance is not fully unlocked for withdrawal. If you look up your balance, sometimes the bank will say the balance is $XXX, but only $YYY is currently available for withdrawal. The difference between the two is the sum of the transactions which are currently being processed and have not yet cleared. I’m not sure if this applies to the PayID system. Maybe they have a way where the money really is instantly transferred and there is no reconciliation time.
No there is no hold. It is just a direct transfer - nothing to clear from my account. I couldn’t have sent the money if I didn’t have it. I sent money to a friend stranded interstate with no cash and he had the money the same day.
Correct; instant credits are instant (well, 2–3 seconds) so, from the point of view of a consumer, if your bank does not offer such a service then it sure seems like they are deliberately screwing you over for some reason, because it’s not like there are not multiple clearing services they could subscribe to or even create a new one.
Do I understand this correctly? Neither the charge nor the credit has been processed yet from your debit activity yesterday on your account? So the money is still in your account, although there may be a hold on it?
I think the chances are both the charge and the credit will be processed at the same time. They certainly aren’t going to process the credit before the charge. My experience with debit charges is that they always take a couple of days to finalize.
I’m not clear how the merchant benefits in this particular case, I don’t think they can be collecting interest from money they do not have in their possession (but I may be wrong). The reasons for the day or two delay may include situations like this, where incorrect charges have been corrected. Those reasons may also include “steal a penny from everyone” and also measures to reduce fraudulent transactions. Until we have an actual (and honest) bank expert coming in to tell us, I doubt if we will know for sure.
Correct. It is affecting my available balance not my actual balance.
But that is still an issue. Let’s say I make a purchase for $100 and they accidentally charge $1000. Sure they immediately issue a $900 credit but until everything clears I can’t use that $900 and that could cause an issue if I have bills to pay, gas and groceries to buy, etc.
It also worries me that I have no evidence that the credit was even issued. No pending credit in my bank app and the receipt I put in my pocket has mysteriously disappeared so the fact that things were not resolved this morning has me on edge hence my OP - WHY wasn’t it resolved this morning if everything is electronic?
This is my personal bug bear, it is 100% absolutely so they can make money off your cash (at your expense) in the intervening time. There is exactly zero reason this kind of thing could not be basically instantaneous. Seeing as financial institutions are making money off being so close to a stock market that the speed of light makes a difference in the transaction time, taking days to get you money is a con plain and simple.
I get at one point, when bits of paper had to be sent from one bank to another, these kind of delays made sense. But those days were gone decades ago, its like this now so that people can make money off us.
They probably wouldn’t have given it to you as cash. Most stores have a rule that anything that happened on a card stays on the card. As @filmore said, there are scams that could be run if they’d routinely give back cash for a card charge.
It’s also to the advantage of the credit card company; which is who decides how long it takes, and which collects the interest in the meantime – not much from any one customer, but I’m sure adds up when multiplied by everybody due a rebate for a wide variety of reasons. So I’d be inclined to blame them instead of the merchant.
Amazon gives me a credit when I drop off the return box at a local place. I guess they assume it will get back to them.
It’s always been my theory that while they’re holding your money, they’re earning interest on it. Very small amounts, but if their policy is to keep everyone’s credit for a few days, it adds up.
I just want to jump in and say that I, a merchant, do not get that money during the time between issuing the refund and you getting it. If I refund someone, that money is deducted from that batch. So if I swipe your card for $300 and then give you a refund of $200 a few minutes later, I’ll only ever see $100 of your money.
If I swipe your card for $300 today and then refund $200 tomorrow, I’ll get the $300 one day and the the following day I’ll get a deposit with all my other credit cards less $200. In that case, I suppose I’d keep the money for an extra day, but only because the refund was done a day later.
I couldn’t tell you who exactly is holding on to the money, but it’s not me.
If the merchant, or the bank, or someone, can mysteriously suck the receipt right out of your pocket, I’d really be antsy about doing business with them ever again.