LeisurePro's Charging Policy Stinks!

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An authorization doesn't mean money in the merchants account. The cardholder is not paying interest on an authorization, so there's no need for a merchant (in this case us/LeisurePro) to pay interest.

That comment was really said tongue in cheek however, now that you mention it I offer the following:

LP is causing that money to effectively leave the buyers account for a period of what? 1 week? 2 weeks? Do you pre-authorize at time of order and hold those funds captive until the shipment goes out at which point the funds get held for another 5-7 days? I am asking really because I do not know. BUT, the fact of the matter, LP is causing the buyer to in essence lose money from their account for a period of time during which the account holder may (or may not) lose the fractions of pennies that they would have otherwise earned in interest. LP may not owe the customer interest but they sure as heck owe them a better procedure that does not tie up double the purchase for a minimum of 7 days. IJS
 
If I may be so simple, (and this is just my mild 2 cents), this thread is a perfect example of why to use American Express, especially with online purchases. Again, just sayin'.
 
If I may be so simple, (and this is just my mild 2 cents), this thread is a perfect example of why to use American Express, especially with online purchases. Again, just sayin'.

OP was specific, he did not want to use a normal credit card for personal/security reasons, it was not a credit limit issue that an AMEX card would address.
 
Actually, we do have it setup correctly/the way you describe. We just don't have any control over how PayPal and banks talk to each other. After sending your message to our team and having them confirm that our system is setup how you describe, it's pretty clear at this point that this is just how PayPal deals with things. Note my shock and dismay that PayPal does something screwy
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I am entirely accepting of the fact that this could very well have been a PayPal issue which might also explain why the authorization vanished after I submitted a report to PayPal about this. While I have never had this problem using PayPal on other orders with other vendors with much larger transaction amounts over the period of 4 years that I have been using PayPal, I am also not naive in thinking that honest mistakes or glitches don't happen in real life; I am well aware that they do and that's OK as long as the vendor works with the client to figure things out.

When I spoke to the agent at LP last week I was told this is just standard LP policy, so imagine my dissatisfaction with LP's policy :wink:

Your comment "Note my shock and dismay that PayPal does something screwy" is indicative of the very kind of apathy and indifference towards improving the customer experience IMHO that got me so irritated when speaking to the support agents on the phone.

This is, and always has been from the start,
a simple matter of trust that the customer (me) afforded the vendor (LP) based on the vendor's responsibility (I assumed) to manage the customer's transaction professionally and with good supporting customer service when the customer phones back with a concern. After all I am paying LP with money for the items I ordered and I am also giving LP my choice to do business with them and not another vendor. In my case all I got was "it's standard policy" from the LP's phone support, and "don't look at us, it's PayPal, they're to blame" from you.

[Edit: If I chose to use the normal credit card process on LP's site and they used Authorize.net or some other payment processor and things went pear shaped during that transaction, would the client have to bark at Authorize.net to get it sorted out or should this be something LP should take care of? Usually it's the vendor, right? LP integrated PayPal, so they should be able to work with them directly if there are any vendor concerns about charges. If this is not possible then vendors should stop integrating PayPal into their online stores and I can guarantee you PayPal will have a pretty decent incentive to up their game and start providing that level of support if they hope to stay in business. It's when vendors have this "could not care" attitude and leaving the customers to deal with the fallout that this will never bring about any improvement of the process.]

Throughout this whole thing there has been very, very little care that the customer had a problem with the process; everyone was just covering their wickets all the time from the get go, which is also why I got so frustrated with the LP agent that phoned me yesterday (the "Sir, we do not double-charge! This is standard policy." comment was what led me to finally end the conversation because it was crystal clear that, as before, nobody was listening yet). I normally would expect responsible businesses to respond more along the lines of "Wow, we're sorry you had a bad experience; let us get in touch with the payment processor we chose to integrate into our e-Commerce solution and see if we can straighten things out; we will get back to you about how we could work this out." But that would mean that LP would have to take responsibility for however small a part their choices, decisions and communications have played in this debacle. I also suspect that LP would rather not have to deal with the difficulties in trying to get in touch with PayPal support so it's easier to let the client deal with it and call it "standard policy" and walk away from the situation.

[Edit: To be fair the LP agent I spoke to last week in the end did offer to send a message to LP's Finance Dept to see if they could look into the issue but only after I kicked up a fuss about it and I still have no encouraging evidence that suggests they would not just have come back with the same old "standard policy" response either.]

I fear my trust that LP would provide a reasonably smooth payment process for goods purchased online in the future has been shaken significantly enough that I would rather just
save myself the potential headache and not make use of this process again.

Lessons learnt:
1. Do not use PayPal, because you can't get hold of them when you need to and, as has been pointed out, they are not a bank that have to provide some level of compliance to regulations that protect the customer, and
2. Do not use PayPal even if the vendor offers it, because they will pull up their shoulders and point the finger to PayPal when there are any questions because it's too much effort to actually provide friendly, accurate, and helpful support to their clients and PayPal makes a pretty convenient scapegoat.

This is all I am going to say on this matter from this point forward since it is taking more effort than it is worth to maintain the apparent delusion that customers have a right to expect good customer service from vendors that they give money to.
 
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That comment was really said tongue in cheek however, now that you mention it I offer the following:

LP is causing that money to effectively leave the buyers account for a period of what? 1 week? 2 weeks? Do you pre-authorize at time of order and hold those funds captive until the shipment goes out at which point the funds get held for another 5-7 days? I am asking really because I do not know. BUT, the fact of the matter, LP is causing the buyer to in essence lose money from their account for a period of time during which the account holder may (or may not) lose the fractions of pennies that they would have otherwise earned in interest. LP may not owe the customer interest but they sure as heck owe them a better procedure that does not tie up double the purchase for a minimum of 7 days. IJS

Since I am the social media guy (who has only helped a few friends setup ecommerce options using Stripe, PayPal, Amazon, and PayMill) and am by no means an expert on how credit card transactions are handled by banks or by PayPal, I decided to call my banks. BofA, Barclays, Citi, CapitalOne, two local credit unions, Schwab, US Bank, and American Express. I asked them the following (I read this script): "If I buy a physical product online and the vendor authorizes the full amount immediately, then charges the amount as items ship, will the authorization negatively impact my available credit?" If they answered yes, then your statement about "money effectively leav[ing] the buyers acount for a period" would be correct. They all answered no. So no money is effectively leaving any of my 13 credit/debit card accounts when a merchant does an authorization. I'm not saying all cards/banks work this way, but 13 cards across 9 "banks" do. Again, I don't work for any bank, I don't even handle payment processing for LP, I just called my banks and asked them. If one of my cards had said yes, I wouldn't use it if I was concerned about an authorization limiting me from using the card for something else.

Your comment "Note my shock and dismay that PayPal does something screwy" is indicative of the very kind of apathy and indifference towards improving the customer experience IMHO that got me so irritated when speaking to the support agents on the phone.


I'm sorry if this came across as me/us being apathetic and indifferent, this was just my commentary about how I personally hate PayPal because they are always doing something screwy and offering no way to talk to someone to fix it. You are a prime example of a customer preferring to use PayPal instead of a credit card through our system, that's why we offer it as an option. Perhaps some day enough people will have bad experiences with PayPal that it won't be a necessary option, but for now, people seem to like it.
 
So no money is effectively leaving any of my 13 credit/debit card accounts when a merchant does an authorization.

As much as I hate referring to Wikipedia as a source they do explain it pretty clearly: "Authorization hold (also card authorization, preauthorization, or preauth) is the practice within the banking industry of authorizing electronic transactions done with a debit card or credit card and holding this balance as unavailable either until the merchant clears the transaction (also called settlement), or the hold "falls off." " Just go to wikipedia and do a search for the term "Authorization hold", the sentence above is the first in that article.

You are a prime example of a customer preferring to use PayPal instead of a credit card through our system, that's why we offer it as an option. Perhaps some day enough people will have bad experiences with PayPal that it won't be a necessary option, but for now, people seem to like it.

How would this have been any different had this been a normal credit card process using Authorize.net or some other payment processor besides PayPal? The crux of the mater is in the quoted sentence above: "until the merchant clears the transaction (also called settlement)". LP placed a hold on my available funds then charged two more transactions in addition and left the original hold to simply just "fall off" by itself eventually, thereby taking the money for the items ordered and preventing me from using the funds on hold due to the authorization for several days until the hold expired. I do not see how this process initiated by LP would have made the outcome go any differently whether it went through PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, Amazon, Google Checkout, or any other service.

[Edit: Wells Fargo explains this concept here as well: "An authorization is an approval on a cardholder account for a sale amount. An authorization hold is a reduction of the cardholder's credit line for the amount of the sale. This hold can remain on the cardholder's account for up to 30 days, depending upon the issuing bank policy." - Source ] (Presumably until the merchant "settles" the transaction as described in the Wikipedia article above.)

Wells Fargo continues to say: "When you're conducting a transaction and you need an authorization, remember that the authorization must be for the identical sale amount. If you receive an authorization for the wrong amount, delete the incorrect authorization, and re-authorize for the exact dollar amount", so LP should have cancelled the hold on my account (releasing the funds) when they decided to split the order into two shipments, and placed two new independent holds for the smaller individual amounts which each should have been "settled" themselves, or LP should have just gone ahead and "settled" the full amount from the get go, marked the order as paid, and shipped the items however they wanted to, one box or two).

I am not drawing any more pictures for anyone about this. Surely this is something simple to understand by this point?! :shakehead:
 
As much as I hate referring to Wikipedia as a source they do explain it pretty clearly: "Authorization hold (also card authorization, preauthorization, or preauth) is the practice within the banking industry of authorizing electronic transactions done with a debit card or credit card and holding this balance as unavailable either until the merchant clears the transaction (also called settlement), or the hold "falls off." " Just go to wikipedia and do a search for the term "Authorization hold", the sentence above is the first in that article.

I did one better and contacted the people who actually deal with authorizations and charges on my accounts. I'm sorry, but I'm going to go with what they tell me over what Wikipedia's definition of an authorization hold is every day of the week since they're the ones who control all of it.

LP placed a hold on my available funds then charged two more transactions in addition and left the original hold to simply just "fall off" by itself eventually, thereby taking the money for the items ordered and preventing me from using the funds on hold due to the authorization for several days until the hold expired.

No, PayPal is the one who does the authorization and charge. We only see funds when the charge goes through.

Here's how buying physical stuff online usually works/should work:
1. Buyer checks out.
2. Card is authorized for full amount of order. This is done to make sure the buyer can actually pay for the order and items aren't taken out of inventory incorrectly.
3. Card is charged for the full amount when the item is shipped. The bank/card is told that the charge takes the place of the authorization. Depending on the bank/card, the authorization will fall off somewhere between 24 hours and 7 days (or 6+ months in the case of my United charge on my Citi card). Also depending on the bank, this authorization may or may not have an impact on available credit.
4. Vendor receives payment from payment processor, customer receives order. At no time does the vendor have double payment.

If something goes wrong in this process, we step in and take care of it.
 
I'm sorry, but I'm going to go with what they tell me over what Wikipedia's definition of an authorization hold is every day of the week since they're the ones who control all of it.

No, PayPal is the one who does the authorization and charge. We only see funds when the charge goes through.

And Wells Fargo is wrong too? Nice.
LP is the merchant. The merchant can request the hold to be "settled" or cancelled. Paypal is just another payment processor just like Authorize.net, Amazon and whoever else. They all work the same way. Stop hiding behind PayPal. This is a severely broken process issue within LP the more I look at this.

End of conversation.
 
Sorry, of the 9 banks I belong to, Wells Fargo isn't one of them. I used to have an account with them, but they kept screwing things up so I left them years ago. If there is a break in our process, it's in offering PayPal. Yet customers use it, so we still offer it. I'll be sure to pass your feedback along.
 
Nick, I can't help but think you weren't asking quite the right question. Be that as it may, you are the online community manager? May I enquire what that entails?
 

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