Tesco taking money without authorisation

[justsue]

I check my bank every couple of days and to my amazement found a transaction for £1.00 coming out of my account. When I checked with my bank it turned out it was Tesco!. It appears after many phone calls and going into the branch that when I paid for shopping of £26.56, they actually took £1.00 first to "check my card was valid and not a fraud".

The manager of the store said that Tesco every so often take a pound from a debit card/credit card to check that it is valid and then it goes back into your account within 5-7 working days. My arguement to this is. What if I did not have the spare pound for them to take. What if I had £27.00 in my account and by them taking the £1.00 sent me overdrawn, I would then be charged bank charges of up to £30.00. Surely I am NBU in saying this is not right....

wow have heard of this re online shopping but didn't realise they did it for instore shoppers too!

Never heard of a shop doing this when you shop instore

The paypal thing I've seen but you have to activly click on the authorisation yourself, so you know in advance that this is happening and that £1 or whatever is goingt o be taken

To randomly take money with out explanation and a warning in advance does strike me as dubious, especially as this seems to have been done instore not for an online transaction.
Isn't that why we have chip and pin at the checkouts, by entering the pin we are supposed to be proving we have authority to use the card

Oh, I missed the point that it was an instore transaction. That is saying that they are storing Credit Card details. That can't be acceptable under card payment rules, can it?

If the checkout girl had said to me "We randomly check cards and yours may be checked and £1 will be held before I proceed with your shopping" I would of said fine go ahead but it was the fact that they took the money from my account wether it be £1 or £1000 it was unauthorised simple as that. As it happens I have come to a good conculsion but how many people have not!!!!!

justsue they don't get the interest on it though because although it shows up on your account as being gone it isn't it is just pending it hasn't actually left your account it is held aside as pending and drops back in within a few days. My bank account it takes 5 days...believe me I know I spent 3 weeks trying to pay a deposit on a holiday that wasn't authorising at the other end and the cash kept dropping back.

YANBU it doesn't matter whether it was reserved or taken, the fact is you did not give authorisation. I accept that T Mobile do it as well as other companies but you still have to give authorisation and that is the point in my opinion.