I tried to order several items last night, but I got the message that my payment was declined. I thought I had perhaps mistyped something so I went through the process again and still the payment was declined.
After several failed tries I thought perhaps my debit card did not have enough money after all. When I checked the account, sure enough I no longer had enough balance. But when I looked at the account activity I found charge from Paizo for the amount of the purchase ($53.95) mere minutes earlier.
Excited I thought perhaps the order went through. But when I check my downloads page, there is nothing new. And when I checked my order history, there is nothing recent there.
So how is it that my account was charged and the money removed from my account, yet the order did not go through? What can we do to fix this? Either I need my money back or I need to get the pdfs I ordered.
How do we proceed here?
Wedgie
I have done a lot more investigation into this and I realize what has happened.
You "checked" that I had a valid debit card by putting a hold pending transaction for the amount of the purchase on my debit card.
Then once your system determined the validity of the account, you tried a SECOND transaction for the amount of the purchase.
At this point, because you held the full amount of the purchase when you checked the validity of the account, there was no longer enough money in the debit card to complete the purchase.
Basically you tried to take twice as much money from my account - but as the bank has informed me, 8 days from now the pending amount will drop from my account and my balance will go back to where it was supposed to be.
So I would like to suggest one of two things here.
1) Do not "hold" the full amount when you check the validity of the card. Some vendors will only "hold" a single dollar instead of the full amount. It still removes an extra dollar that will be returned to me later, but this is far better than double the amount of the purchase.
or
2) Actually complete the hold pending action instead of performing a second transaction. This will allow consumers to purchase items without needing to have double the purchase amount in their account.
I would still like to purchase from you. I have other forms of payment. However I need to know that you will not go and "complete" the earlier transaction.
The bank informed me of what steps you, the vendor, can perform to release the hold. But quite frankly I would not wish that amount of paperwork on an enemy. That's just nuts. So I will simply choke down the loss of the money for the next week.
Customer Service Representative
|
Hello Wedgie,
It looks like our card processor was being picky and wouldn't process the payment because your billing address listed your name in all caps. I've changed that, and was able to put the order through, so you should see the PDFs available on your account now.
What you were seeing before was actually just an authorization, which I have now requested a reversal for. You can read more about our authorization process on our FAQ here.
This should be all settled now, but please don't hesitate to let me know if there is anything else that I would be able to help you out with.
Thanks!
Katina
You guys are sneaky. I like that. :)
Thank you for fulfilling the order properly. I see my downloads now. And I see the adjustments made properly to my debit account.
Awesomeness abounds! Order has been restored.
Thanks again,
Wedgie
|
Customer Service Representative
|
Hey there,
I hadn't even seen your second post until I submitted my response, but it looks like you figured out all of our secrets! Sorry for the confusion with authorizations. When there isn't a hiccup, we usually just finalize the same authorization so it doesn't cause as many problems, but sometimes our card processor likes to whine at us. Usually we can convince it to behave, though.
Glad to hear that your PDFs made it through alright! Just give us a holler if there's anything else we can do. :)