£300 taken from o2

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Basically, I decided to upgrade early on my contract. I got through the 'Delivery', 'Payment', 'Agreement' parts of the upgrade process, before I got to the 'Review' section and then decided to not bother upgrading just because I changed my mind. The money had been taken from my bank account, however. I got an email saying that the link to the upgrade review was active for 72 hours. I phoned o2, and told them about this. They said that my money was just 'processing/on hold' until the link expired, because just in case I wanted to upgrade. I was told once it expired, I'd get the money back, and in the meantime neither I or o2 had it, but it was out of my account and processing. The link has now expired, and my money is still 'on hold'. I talked to 3 gurus on the live chat and none of them can help me since the money isn't with o2, it's processing, and they cannot see any evidence of this.

What do I do about this? I need my £300 back.

[MI5]

Speak to your bank - it hasn't actually left your account yet.

[madasaf1sh]

If you speak to your bank they may need evidence from o2 that they arent going to claim the funds..

Held funds usually clear down 3-5 days after the transaction... unfortunately its an issue with the visa/mc/amex processing system

[Curr946]

It's not an issue @madasaf1sh it's by design. It's to ensure that retailer have time to process payments in bulk, while stopping customer going overdrawn.

[madasaf1sh]

Its nothing to do with bulk processing, its to do with a merchant holding funds to ensure that the customer has the money to pay for the goods, at which time the merchant sends the either a settlement instruction to your card issuer or it just falls off . The merchant doesnt care if it takes the customer overdrawn its a funds available request.

This is because of how it works when you purchase goods / services the merchant gets authorisation this verifies you have enough money to pay, for the goods / services, then at the end of the day the merchant completes the transaction via end of day processing if the transaction is concluded then it takes the money if not then it is held for between 3 and 5 days.