I just made a purchase of a gift certificate but was told my payment method was declined. When I checked my bank, it shows a pending charge from Paizo and it has already been deducted from my balance. I never got a gift certificate code to use.
See this FAQ. The credit/debit card processor Paizo uses is very, very particular. It probably failed on address match to the one your bank has on file. This can happen if the addresses aren't exactly the same. What you are probably seeing is an authorization. Your bank reserved the funds because Paizo checked if you had enough available. Your bank said "yes" but the processor said "this charge can't be finalized".
The authorization will expire if the charge isn't settled. In the meantime, double check the address at you have on the bank site and on the Paizo site.
Oh, and customer service is off for the holidays, which is why I took the liberty of sort of butting in. I am sure they will get things fixed for you when they return if you haven't gotten it by then.
Oh, and customer service is off for the holidays, which is why I took the liberty of sort of butting in. I am sure they will get things fixed for you when they return if you haven't gotten it by then.
Ok, thank you. I'll wait until Tuesday to see if everything is resolved.
Hi FreshWaterOwl,
It looks like Hawkmoon's guess was correct.
For some more details:
Your card is being declined by our credit card processing system because it is not passing the address verification check. This means that there is something different between the billing address that is listed for your card on our site compared to what your bank has on file for you, so our card processor is declining it for security reasons. While your bank may be willing to open the transaction as a pending authorization, we will not be able to finalize any charges through that. As we do not finalize any charges until items ship from our warehouse, these are just temporary authorizations that will expire from your account. More details about our billing process can be found here: http://paizo.com/paizo/faq#v5748eaic9n0t
I have submitted an authorization reversal request for this transaction. This should notify your bank that we will not be finalizing any charges through those and they can release any holds they may have on the funds. In most cases, those should be reversed in about 1 business day, but it may take 1 to 5 business days, depending on your bank.
Before trying again, please double check that the billing address on your Paizo.com account exactly matches the billing address on file with your bank. Our credit card processor can be picky, so please double check things like capitalization of letters, abbreviations, etc.
If you are having trouble updating it on your side of the system, feel free to send your address (exactly as your bank displays it) via email, and we can make the correct changes on our side of the system.
Thanks!
~Sharaya