To ask why it has taken 15 days after a transaction for the money to be deducted from my account?

[Goldenhandshake]

On the 26th September I went and bought a few bits in Lidl after work, the money has only left my account today.

Luckily it was only £10 odd worth of stuff, but if had been a big shop and over £50 then it would have eaten up the money that is left in that particular account today and then forced me into an unauthorised overdraft.

AIBU to think it should not take 15 days for a transaction to process? I have never had this when paying by debit card elsewhere.

Tesco petrol station...... usually takes a couple o weeks. a petrol station in wales once took 3 months :(

Stinky 3 months! That must be some kind of (dubious) record

Usually (not always) if I pay by debit card the amount immediately comes off my available balance. The balance may remain the same but the actual money available will be minus the amount of the transaction. However I have noticed that if we use "pay at pump" for petrol then the amount isn't tkaen off until 2/3/4 days later

It is annoying

I like pay at pump for that reason! If there is only a penny left in my account I can get fuel a few days before payday knowing it wont come out till then

but otherwise my available balance normally shows minus the transaction even if its not taken for a few days after.

YAB a a bit U to ask US.

I used to work in credit/debit card processing a few years ago, so my explanation may be slightly out of date, but here goes:

A large company like Lidl will collect all of the sales/refunds from all of their stores in one big electronic file and deliver it to their credit card processor (normally one of the big banks, e.g. Natwest, Barclays). The bank credits Lidl with the value of the file and sends the sale/refund details to the cardholders banks so they can debit/credit the cardholders bank accounts.

Loads of things can go wrong with this process - files can become corrupted and can take a while to repair them etc. It's comparatively rare, but that's what may have happened this time.

Why, Trills? It's well known that MNers are the fount (font?) of all knowledge!

Or maybe even fountain?

YABU

But surely if you know you've spent that money then you don't spend it again - so why would it have pushed you further into the red than if it had come out say a couple of days afterwards, do you see what I mean?

I've had the odd transaction for things like dry cleaning come out months after I actually made the payment.

Just to expand, it's not unreasonable to ask, but I think it's unreasonable to expect them to take the money more quickly - it's up to them! Plus, if you don't like it you can pay cash, or shop somewhere else. Vote with your feet and all that.

Thanks for the explanation MrsVestibule that makes more sense now!

Trills I wasn't really sure whether I should be asking my bank or Lidl, and as a pp said, mumsnet is the font of all knowledge

Alibaba when I thought I had spent the money, it was pay day, and as I said I've never had this issue using debit cards before, so naturally assumed my balance was reflected accurately for the past two weeks. It's not caused an issue luckily, as I had money in that account, but with such a long time between the transaction and the money being taken, it certainly had the potential to.