House of Fraser cleared out my bank account.

[dclg]

I tried to buy a bag from House of Fraser online. At the final stage the transaction on my Visa debit card was rejected. A pink box appeared saying that the transaction had failed and that I should try again or use another card. I tried again with the same card and the same thing happened. I followed the instructions and tried my MasterCard and again it was declined. At that point I again followed the instructions and phoned the customer service number on the screen. They said they would reset my account and should try again in 20 mins. I did this and again it was rejected.

These multiple attempts which I was encouraged by the website and customer serves to make resulted in requests for funds being sent to my bank and they proceeded to remove the money to a holding account which I could not access. I only stopped when there wasn't enough money in my account to cover the request.

I have spent 3 days of my life emailing and talking to House of Fraser in order to stop this from happening to anyone else. Just say someone tried to buy a sofa? That amount of money going out of their account a number of times may mean that they can't make the mortgage or rent payments which then affects their credit rating. This is a very serious problem and House of Frasers' response has been, so sorry, it happens sometimes, here's £20, which I am certainly not taking. I wish I could show you the cut and paste emails with generic platitudes and no indication that they are taking responsibility for the misery they are causing.
Using Frasers online is like playing Russian roulette. The minute you press buy even if the transaction does not go through as I understand it, a 'pre-authorisation' request will be sent to your bank or credit card and those funds will no longer be available to you until the bank releases them days or weeks later.
I have given House of Fraser every opportunity to give me some indication that something will be done to prevent this happening to anyone else but they don't seem to care. This is a dangerous and cavalier attitude to peoples finances and lives and I am simply telling my story as a warning to the unsuspecting.

[wannabedomesticgoddess]

This isn't a problem that HoF can resolve though. It happens everywhere. It happened to me in my local garage. The funds get released back maybe 3 to 5 days later, I can't quite remember.

I understand its an inconvenience, when it happened to me it was my last £40 til payday. But this really isn't entirely their fault, they can't reverse it so what else can they do except apologise?

[dclg]

I'm sorry to hear that happened to you. I have numerous emails from the company stating that they know the issue of pre-authorisation exists, so my question has been why does a box appear on your website suggesting you try again?

[HoneyDragon]

We paid for our car twice. HSBC let both payments through, making us £15,320 over drawn.

It took 5 days to resolve.

[wannabedomesticgoddess]

Well the simple answer to that is they want the sale no matter what.

If you ask me its more the bank that's to blame. Surely they could have developed some kind of manual way to release the funds!

[quoteunquote]

www.theguardian.com/money/series/bachelor-and-brignall-consumer-champions

send the details to these people

[bruffin]

The money is trapped by the bank. It won't hit House of Fraser's accounts.
I work for a car dealership and a customer hsd a similarproblem to Honeydragon. They had been taken from their account but was sitting in nomansland. We didnt have the money for the car so couldn't release it and the couldn't pay us because there was no money left in their account.
It does resolve itself eventually

[HoneyDragon]

bruffin awkward isn't it?

[bruffin]

Also had a friend who was trying to buy a phone on line. The money got taken 3 times as the bank kept rejecting the payment. The banks view online mobile comoaniestransactions with suspicion so won't let the ttansaction go through but still freeze try he money for each attempt.

[bruffin]

It was really embarrassing Homesteading, I am sure the poor customer didn't believe us that well didn't have his money. It was our salesman's fault sort of as he accident cancelled the transaction half way through.

[bruffin]

It's not in Asdas ghost account, It's somewhere in the bank/credit card companies accounts.

[pointythings]

This happened to me too - I paid for our Disney holiday twice, the bank were useless about it, said they needed all kinds of complex authorisation from Disney before they could move the second lot of money back into my account.

I was lucky that I had enough in my account not to go overdrawn so I could wait it out, but I wasn't impressed.

[chesterberry]

This has happened to me before on another website, repeated transactions of about £90 failing to go through and my money was moved from my account so that I couldn't access it. I wasn't able to take any money from my account and it was three days before the money was available again. I only have the one bank account and had to borrow money from a friend so that I could go out for another friend's birthday which had been planned for weeks. I had over £300 but was essentially broke until the money cleared. Very, very annoying and I was lucky I had a friend to borrow from and didn't have any major payments to make in that time.

Not sure it's the website's fault though, think it's more a problem with the bank. I will know for next time though not to repeatedly try to buy things online if it fails as it will risk leaving me broke for a few days.

[StuntGirl]

No way would I have repeatedly tried ordering something online if it didn't take my payment! And I would have checked my online banking to see if the money had come out before trying again if I did make another attempt.

[Cheesyslice]

Orange took £738 out of my account. Luckily I was able to stop the transaction.

You have my sympathy; money going out of your account and only having people to talk to over email / phone is distressing. Hope it gets resolved quickly

[HoneyDragon]

Yes in our case the first payment went to the dealership. The second just sat in a Natwest account.

[SoupDragon]

It's not House of Fraser's fault.

[SoupDragon]

Welcome to MN by the way.

[LazyMonkeyButler]

This happened to me with Next - they took £100 twice & I still didn't receive any goods as the transaction hadn't processed fully .

The money was returned & they sent me a £40 gift card - which they didn't validate so is unusable .

I just don't shop at Next online anymore.

[BinksToEnlightenment]

It's not their fault. It's a failed transaction which has caused amounts to become blocked as pending to leave your account.

[BinksToEnlightenment]

This could have happened during any card transaction.

[MrsBW]

Another one who agrees - frustrating as it is - it really isn't House of Fraser's fault.

Speak to your bank to explain the situation - it's in a 'pending' account of theirs, i.e. they've put a hold on it and they're the only ones that can release it.

[Ilovemyself]

This used to happen a lot when I was processing customers mail order transactions. Even with the 3 digits from the back of the card, the merchants card services company may not be able to confirm the 3 digits are correct with the card holders company. This only comes to light after the card has been authorised.

In my experience if we voided the transaction the money simply sat in the cardholders banks on hold account for up to 5 days, or we agreed to take the risk on the transaction and paid a higher % of the transaction as our fee

[Pigsmummy]

John Lewis is awful too, they try to tell you that your secure pay number isn't correct and I actually changed mine, when it failed for about the ninety millionth time I called and they said " oh yeah there is a system problem, can I take your order?". Shocking!

[Pigsmummy]

I disagree with people saying that it isn't HoF fault, it's their website and their technology that failed! Yes the money is in a holding account but HoF should put their hands up and arrange a credit strait away.