Pre-paid credit card stole my money

Elimination

Now, i am confused. I've used pre-paid mastercards by this company for a while now, and this is the first time this has ever happened:



Total Debits $28.00
Total Credits $50.00

Notice the total Debits = only $28 of the total credit? I kept track of my online spending with ti, and thats about right, leaving about $22 left yes?

Available Balance: -$5.71 wait what? Wheres my $22?

I found this out after trying to purchase a Steam sale item tonight. It was rejected, and i -knew- i'd only used it to buy 2 things. Heres the report from the web site when i check:
Right here.

Did i get double charged somehow? Or what is going on here? It's showing 4 transactions, and they seem to be the 2 transactions i authorized, plus 2 more from the same web sites, for the same item, but with pennies difference? Or am i reading this wrong?

Either way i -know- i only made 2 transactions, and they did not in any way shape or form add up to $50, and now the cards balance is -$5.71? What the fuck is going on?

How can i fix this? I dont want to be ripped off.

Pheezer

Is it possible that the gift card activation is taking longer than the debits?

Elimination

Pheezer wrote: »

Is it possible that the gift card activation is taking longer than the debits?

I've had the gift card for like 2 weeks. I buy them explicitly to shop on Steam and D2D and nothing else. I only made the two purchases, both last week a few days apart. It's coming up as 4 purchases from the same sites or am i reading it wrong?

I dont really understand why it isn't working when i didn't make $50 in purchases. This has never happened before.

Edit: To make matters even worse the Steam sale will run out and i will miss it because of this screw up.

arcath

I have had this problem.

For me it has been things like gas station purchases where I might spend $10 but they put a $25 hold on the card.

Just wait a couple days and the balance should be corrected.

Hope you dont miss your sale.

Seeks

Yeah, this happens sometimes. My mom's a banker, she says it's something to do with "memo posting" or some such. I think it varies from bank to bank, but that card has to draw from somewhere.

Basically, it'll charge you for something twice. That's what happened to me just recently. It'll correct itself in a day or two - or did in my case.

Darkewolfe

I know gas stations will often put a $100 hold on your card when you actually run the transaction, then put a charge of the correct amount when they finalize transactions at the end of the day. The $100 gets refunded to you after a day or two, but it isn't always immediate.

I think normally retailers just directly debit the correct amount, though.

Gonmun

I had the same thing happen with a prepaid credit card when I purchased something online. I bought an item in american funds where the money on the card was Canadian. Needless to say the system had a bit of an issue and it wound up charging it twice for some reason. I just gave the card company a quick call and they fixed it. Took no more then 15 minutes. They were able to see what it was right away. I'd suggest just calling and asking them to look into it. When I did it seemed like a pretty common issue.

Mr_Rose

Sorry if this is way off-topic but how is it legal for anyone to effectively charge you more than you owe them based on "but we'll give back the difference. Eventually"?

Midshipman

Mr_Rose wrote: »

Sorry if this is way off-topic but how is it legal for anyone to effectively charge you more than you owe them based on "but we'll give back the difference. Eventually"?

This is fairly common for metered purchases like gasoline where you have to enter the card in advance, get approval, and then some time later find out how much you are actually going to be charged. They place a hold on some number of dollars and then clear out the hold once they enter the actual charge.

Elimination

Ok yeah you guys were right, it fixed itself. I just never had this happen before and i was pissed thinking the pre-paid credit company would screw me over and i'd never see the rest of the money. I am used to credit companies doing stuff to try to rape me for all i am worth so it was a natural instict to think it would happen with a pre-paid one as well.

This is why i cut up all my real credit cards.

MushroomStick

Sounds like a pre-authorization. If so, it'll probably take a day or two to disappear.