To wonder where the hell is my shopping and/or money?

[pissedrightoff]

Last night I checked my bank account online, £105.00 is the balance. Fine, I'll do an online shop at asda to arrive tomorrow.
Total shopping comes to £80.76.

Shopping does not arrive today and when I call to enquire why, I am told that there were insufficent funds in my account.

I then check online balance,£24.24 suggesting that between last night and now £80.76 has been debited.
Phoned bank to make enquiries and indeed Asda have taken the amount and bank gave me the authorisation number.I ask if it is possible that it is a pending payment, bank says no, as it has come off the balance then the payment has went through.

Phone Asda back, not helpful in the slightest, They say that they have not recieved the money, I tell them I have an authorisation code from my bank and an available balance which says otherwise.They say they will look into it and call me back at midday tomorrow.

So I now have only £24,Very little food, live in the back of beyond so no shops, will have to take two buses to a tesco tomorrow to see how far my £24 will stretch for baby food, milk and wipes.

Where is my money if it's not in my bank and Asda say they don't have it????

Blimey. Just read the full thread (well, except probably the 50 posts which will appear when I refresh).

Too little too late from Asda. I've got a choice of Sainsbury, Tesco & Asda for online shops and tend to choose depending on how flush I'm feeling at the time.

Asda just got themselves struck off that list. You'd be mad to risk it reading this nonsense. Basically what they've told me is that if things go wrong they'll drag their feet for as long as possible and accept no responsibility whatsoever.

Luckily I've got the luxury of choice so I'll be saying "no thanks" to that.

Sagacity - most supermarkets will deliver if you spend over £25, well Iceland do and Tescos do for certain

• can't be sure about the others but some other Mnetters might know? I go in do my shop and then they deliver - with Iceland it's usually within a couple of hours.

Thing is, it's not that things went wrong with the money that particularly bothers me. It happens.

It's the fact that they
a) Didn't phone to say the shopping wasn't coming.
b) Dragged their heels and sent the customer from pillar to post trying to sort it out.
c) Refused to accept responsibility for anything really - she's a customer. Even if it's her fault, you try and sort it out - basic, basic customer service.
d) Didn't keep in touch with the customer to let her know how things were going. She shouldn't have had to have kept phoning them.

They just come across like they don't care about their customers. Makes them look cheap and nasty.

I normally do a tesco online shop Fontella. Or go to Sainsbo when DH is back with the car but it means all 5 of us have to go.

Maybe now is the right time to shop only a few days at a time.

The MSE thread has just been deleted. Like 2 seconds ago.

Good.

And the thought of some of those creeps giving people financial advice is scary.

Got a vert terse reply from Richard Dodd of the British Retail Consortium

Mrs Rupert

Asda tell me they were aware of this particular case and have resolved it by delivering the customer's shopping free of charge.

They are confident there is no wider problem with their systems or processes.

Well thats ok then!

PRO can't believe you have not updated to say lots of extra treats have arrived from Asda today.....add me as one who will be trying Ocardo home delivery in the not too distant future

Has the money gone back into your account?

Hi All
No money back into account today and no further correspondence from ASDA today. Not expecting anything further from them as am sure they feel the damage is done and they need not bother with me any further.

I am still writing to their head office, and am going to do more research into this ringfencing lark.

Glad that MSE thread has now been deleted.
Am doing a 'keeping in touch day' at work today so just typing whilst on a quick break.

Only just spotted this thread and am a bit - I am just down the road from you PRO (town called G ) and have used ASDA a lot. I'm now reconsidering using them because I too sail a bit close to the wind at the end of the month sometimes. Another baby en route as well, so dread to think what would happen on mat leave income if they did this to me [shudder]

I'd have brought you some goodies if I'd seen this thread earlier

Hi SBT
Maternity leave is officialy finished been unpaid the last few months,doing the odd day here and there but returning full-time next week so finances will hopefully improve.
Weather shocking today feel like I have slept through July,Aug and Sept and woke up in October

Rupert, thats good as long as they are confident then. Thank you for doing that though.
Something needs to change here, I will approach the FSA for advice

PRO: we are "arabs" here too

Still catching up between baby/toddler duties but glad you got your shopping and hope the MSE turkeys didn't get you down too much.

Dorethea, Nice to 'meet' a fellow tangerine terror.
MSE lot upset me a wee bit to begin with but I think my buddies on here put them in their place nicely.

Hello, I couldn't face reading through 38(!) pages, but for your and others' future reference, I'd always go to the top, using the invaluable CEO e-mail addresses page www.connectotel.com/marcus/ceoemail.html. A senior friend of mine had terrible problems with BT (stuck in the back of beyond, no telephone for two weeks, etc.) and emailed BT from her local library and had a call on her mobile from the CEO's office within a couple of hours and resolution of her problem by the next day. Believe me, they want to know when things aren't working. So, the Chief Executive for Asda is Andy Clarke, as at 21 May 2010 [email protected].

And apologies if this has already been said!

p.s. I'm appalled by your terrible experience!

Hey PRO did you have to pay for your shopping in the end? Are they charging you later? Have you written to Head Office yet?

Dear Shirley

Thank you for your email to Andy Clarke about the home shopping order that's being discussed on mumsnet. As part of Andy's team I'm available on his behalf to respond.

I do appreciate it took a while to look into this matter. However, we did need to investigate this fully.

We spoke directly to the customer a number of times yesterday. Although we weren't at fault for the customers funds being held, I can confirm as a gesture of goodwill the shopping was delivered yesterday evening free of charge.

I'm sorry to read you've decided to withdraw your custom from ASDA as a result of the postings on mumsnet.

If you have any further queries do please let me know.

Yours sincerely

Jordan Anderson

WHATEVS

Anyone care to sum up this thread for me? I was out of town and missed it.

Quick Summary

Asda pre-authorises card payments prior to delivery of goods. They then request the payment from the bank. By pre-authorising the full amount and then requesting the full amount, on occasion it will result in two allocations of money being requested from the bank. If the account does not have sufficient funds to cover that... the last request for money will be declined, as the amount is already allocated in the pre-auth account.

That is what I think happened, though Asda don't seem to be telling us what actually happened.

Asda seems to be wanting to blame the card issuer (the customers bank) where as I feel it is their procedures and their merchant service account (the card processor) who are at fault for not releasing the pre-authorised payment BEFORE requesting the full amount.

I am however just guessing at what happened. Until Asda come on here and say exactly what the situation is regarding the payment processing, we won't know for sure.

The OP got stuck in the middle, as their bank said the funds were allocated (with an authorisation code) but Asda say they didn't get the money. So they didn't deliver the goods. They ALSO (very important) DIDN'T contact the customer to tell them there had been a problem. The OP only found out there was an issue when the delivery didn't arrive.

Shirley - more than anything else so far, if that is the absolute best response from a 'member of Andy's team' then ASDA has a loooong way to go to sort out its customer service.

I have shopped at ASDA (online & in store) since I moved near one (& away from a Tesco/Sainsbury) for the last 6 years. I think Ocado must surely be the way to go now.

email at the bottom of my post was recieved yesterday afternoon,(had'nt checked email until today) So it looks like the money will drop back into my account at some poit.

Spoke to streamline merchant services and they have had these problems before,They did'nt explain to me how they happen or if the fault lay with the merchants system or software or the retailers system or software

The fact remains that ASDA could have avoided this by.....

A)Sending a fax to my bank (Which my bank authorised, and two other representatives of two different banks whom I spoke to, They confirmed this would be the standard practice in teir banks also.)
B)Getting my shopping to me(which they were obviously able to do)

Shirley, They don't seem too concerned at the loss of custom do they?

email reads as follows.....

Dear Mrs PissedRightOff
Firstly I want to say how sorry I am that you've had a bad experience with our home delivery service. We aim to offer a world-class service, and clearly in this instance we've fallen short of our own high standards.
I appreciate that you've been left without your order and the funds in your bank account aren't currently available to you - this must be a stressful and frustrating time for you.
After looking into this today we've established a time out situation occurred when we requested the value of the shopping be held by your card provider. This meant we didn't receive confirmation from your card provider that funds were available for the order. As result the order was inadvertedly cancelled. I'm sorry you didn't receive a text message to warn you of this because this certainly should have been the case. We are investigating why this didn't happen.
So that you're not left without your shopping for another day and as a gesture of goodwill, we have arranged for your original delivery to be sent to you this evening free of charge. We are expecting it to arrive between 5-6pm.
Please let me know if I can be of any further help.
Yours sincerely
Jordan Anderson
Senior Complaints Handler

Please ignore my spelling and grammar.

jolly good!