So a holiday accommodation booking site placed a $500 hold on my account and released it 7 days later, but is still showing as “Pending” and unavailable.
Contacted the bank and they have said it will be available in 2 weeks. Is this the usual timeframe?
Note: This is a debit card not credit card account.
Pre-Authorisation Release Timeframe
MITM on 28/03/2023 - 22:14
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Need to add a poll
That makes sense. Cheers.
I rented a car last week and the rental guy went to great pains to make sure that the credit card I used was an actual credit card, not a debit credit card. He couldn't tell from looking at the card which it was as I hadn't removed the sticker you get when you receive the card, which was right over where the word "debit" would be.
As the rental company guy explained it, using a debit card would result in a $400 hold being placed on the card that would take ages to remove.
The moral of this story is, don't use a debit card for when a rental business needs to do a credit check on you. (Which is to say, if the purpose of giving them the card is so they can do a pending $1 transaction that they can then later reverse just so they can check to confirm that your card is valid.)
Having a higher deposit if you use debit card vs credit card is very common in the US.
Every single time I asked why, no one could answer beyond "it's just policy"… Any ideas?
I have no clue, but if I were to speculate it's because they're checking your credit worthiness. Putting $1 against a credit account likely means they can charge you significantly more if required, whereas a debit account is only ever going to be able to cover the actual amount you currently have in your debit account, and even then only if you don't withdraw that cash immediately after they've checked.
Lesson learnt. Thanks all.
I had a pre-authorisation of $200 placed on my credit card two and a half weeks ago when I stayed at a hotel. They said it would be released in a few days. I'm still waiting. It's annoying.
My understanding is that pre-auths are released if a payment is processed by the merchant on the same card.
The delays happen when a subsequent payment isn't processed, and then a separate process or time period kicks in.Happy to be corrected though (no doubt).
yes