LeisurePro's Charging Policy Stinks!

[Dr. Lecter]

Apparently merchants need to consider adding a disclaimer to their payment options, something along the lines of: 'If you do not/cannot grasp the logistical issues that can arise with using a third-party payment system to facilitate a transaction paid for by a bank through your credit card account, or even with just having the bank manage your credit card account as it sees fit, please stop now. Make payment using some other means -- like cash, money order, or cashier's check -- and accept the attendant delays. We do not and cannot control what your bank does with authorizations on your account, or when it does these things.'

What's ironic is that this largely stems from what looks like a pretty buyer-friendly policy: charges only applied to the extent goods are actually shipped. LP could have saved itself a good deal of headache by just charging the guy the full price on the spot and shipped what was available when it was available. Though it's possible that then there'd be a double counting by the bank of the initial authorization and the actual charge. But that's not LP's doing, it's having a ty banker.

 

[ScubaSteve]

A question for the OP......sorry if this is somewhere in here already.

were you refused cash because of the "authorization" charge or are you concerned because you saw the double charge? If it was, as Nick has said, just an authorization, and did not in fact alter your funds available, the this really is a moot point and just a learning experience for what to expect to see in our accounts. If you were actually refused money because of it.....different story. Although, it might be worth asking PayPal what their policies are. If LP did not have that money them it is likely that PayPay did.

 

[Melicertes]

Hi Nick,


I realize that you have to attempt to promote and maintain a sparkling image for LP here on your other social media platforms and the fact that you have been responding here tells me that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing and I thank you for that. Please understand that my gripe is not with you or with anyone specifically at LP. My gripe is because there is a procedural issue here that nobody wanted to acknowledge and still will not acknowledge. This is not personal and I have no hidden agenda to somehow sully LP's name and reputation; I do however want to make it clear what happened to me with this transaction since it was a bad experience and I feel we need to talk about it since none of the people I spoke to on the phone seem to be able to look past the semantics of the words used and see the actual impact that happened in practice.


Please do not take my comments below personally. Here we go, one last time with the details...

According to the customer service people at my various banks, if that $5000 transaction is simply an authorization, the following $6000 transaction will go through without a problem. If the first $5000 transaction was a charge, then no, the following $6000 transaction wouldn't go through.

Upon closer examination the individual banks each seem to have their own policies about holds. US Bank, the bank that my account is held with for the transaction I had problems with, as well as at least one other bank; i.e. Wells Fargo, have confirmed that they view the concept of a preauth hold as setting aside or "sequestering" the funds requested by the merchant during the preauthorization process for the purposes of covering the imminent completion of a transaction. The point of a hold, as I and my bank understands it, is to ensure that the funds are available and will remain available until the order is "settled" and completed and the hold then converts into a charge which posts permanently to my account statement. When the merchant "settles" the transaction the original transaction id has to be referenced when communicating with the payment processor so they know that the "settlement" has to now convert the funds held by the original preauth into a final and permanent charge.

Paypal processed LP's preauth for $463.15 on 09/01. These funds were "sequestered" by my bank on Paypal's request as it should be. LeisurePro then went ahead and charged $213.20 and $249.95 on 09/03. These charges appeared to be independent of the preauth because I see no way that PayPal could have known that the $463.15 was made up of the two smaller amounts $213.20 and $249.95 on their own without receiving information from LP; there must have been some activity from LP that defined what the two smaller charge amounts should be, so this is not PayPal doing something weird at all. This resulted in the two smaller charges being charged to account which rightfully further reduced my available bank account balance while the previous preauth was also still in effect (remember the preauth hold had already "sequestered" the full amount from my available balance during the original preauth process). Therefore, while I may have referred to this situation originally as having been "double-charged" I understand and regret that I ever used this term because that is not what double-charged means in the strictest sense of the term; however, not releasing the preauth hold and then adding the actual real world charges on top amounted in practical terms to what could be considered a "double-charge" for a period of time on my end.


So let me be crystal clear (because it seems all the agents I spoke to on the phone as well as some people here on the forum missed this repeatedly); I am not saying that LeisurePro charged the order twice. I am saying that the preauth does not seem to have been released the way it should have been by LP to prevent the two later, smaller charges after the order split from stacking on top of the already "sequestered" preauth hold amount. This means my available balance was reduced by $926.30 (the original preauth amount plus the two smaller charges added later) as opposed to just the $463.15 that it should have been. Had LP released the preauth and then charged the two smaller amounts we would not be speaking about this at all; instead LP's policy seems to be to simply leave the preauth in force and let it eventually fall off", expire, time out, whatever you choose to call it, by itself and that would tie up my funds for at least 7 business days according to what LP told me on the phone last week (this could have been 30 days according to my bank).

I realize I made a mistake (sorry, fighting a pretty nasty cold so I'm not firing on all cylinders today) and thought people were looking for an explanation when what is really needed is an apology.

I was not looking for an apology. I need LP to acknowledge that there is a problem with the way this system works. Perhaps this is a series of unusual events that just happened to create the conditions that are just right for this to have happened, but it means that it did happen and should be looked at. It might not affect people that happen to use the same banks you use and that do not seem to "sequester" the funds immediately from your available balance, but there are many other people in the United States that use US Bank, Wells Fargo and I am sure several others who do work this way. LP's lack of closing the loop by first cancelling the original preauth if they decide to split an order into smaller batches will affect those customers that use PayPal (who knows, it might happen even without PayPal in the mix). You might not have a problem with your stuff but I did have one and so I believe the possibility exists for other US Bank and Wells Fargo customers as well. LP's process in this seems to be where the problem started and that is where this should be looked at first. This is why I am kicking up the amount of dust I am kicking up about this. It is not about LP's integrity as a company or any individual person working for LP. This is about a business process that might negatively affect a reasonably large subset of LP's customers (which up to now I have been part of) and it is a business process that needs to be investigated and fixed.

"As long as PayPal processes it as an authorization it should work the same way as if you did it directly".

I rest my case on the PayPal issue.

There, that in a nutshell summarizes all the basic elements of this whole debacle in one post. I might still be wrong on much of this stuff and I accept that, but after having spent a significant amount of time talking my bank and various professional developers that design and implement this kind of stuff on a daily basis, the above is the best of what I have come to understand about the situation.


All I want is for LP to stop going cross-eyed when someone mentions the term "double charged" and really look into this issue with an open mind. Don't just ask an in-house programmer in passing to briefly check things out and then leave it be. I mean really go look at this process and make sure that this is not a procedural issue on LP's side because that is what I have come to believe this is. If it turns out that all is golden then so be it then I will point the black finger to PayPal and call them the Black Sheep of shame.

---------- Post added September 11th, 2013 at 08:02 PM ----------

A question for the OP......sorry if this is somewhere in here already.

were you refused cash because of the "authorization" charge or are you concerned because you saw the double charge? If it was, as Nick has said, just an authorization, and did not in fact alter your funds available, the this really is a moot point and just a learning experience for what to expect to see in our accounts. If you were actually refused money because of it.....different story. Although, it might be worth asking PayPal what their policies are. If LP did not have that money them it is likely that PayPay did.

I had just over $1,000 in my online spending account. I placed the order with LP and the preauth hold went into effect reducing the available funds by $463.15 and left about $500 or so as available funds. Two days later two additional charges were added, $213.20 and $249.95 respectively, which further reduced my available balance to around $70-ish. When the preauth hold was eventually released 72 hours later after I kicked up some dust about this with LP, PayPal and here, the available balance on the account went back up to around $500.

Hope that clarifies it a bit.

---------- Post added September 11th, 2013 at 08:12 PM ----------

charges only applied to the extent goods are actually shipped.

Which part of me saying that the preauth hold directly reduced my available balance and continued to affect it for 72 hours after the two additional charges were submitted when the items shipped do you get? I also believe that this would have been much longer had I not started to make a stink about it. Now go back and read the information slowly and carefully before you think you can comment intelligently on what we're talking about.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Which part of me saying that the preauth hold directly reduced my available balance and continued to affect it for 72 hours after the two additional charges were submitted when the items shipped do you get? I also believe that this would have been much longer had I not started to make a stink about it. Now go back and read the information slowly and carefully before you think you can comment intelligently on what we're talking about.

Regardless of whatever systems information degrees/experience you may have, you really don't get how this financial stuff works in your context, do you? LP can reference the original authorization ID on each subsequent charge they apply until they're blue in the face, and they can even send whatever communications they like about how the original authorization should be released, but no merchant has any direct control over your bank. And whether and when the reduction in your available balance represented by the original authorization is released/falls off is solely within the control of your bank. Whether anything LP says about this stuff even gets passed along to your bank is complicated by the addition of Paypal to the transaction.

If you have some evidence that LP failed to do something it could have done in the normal course of business to remove the authorization -- like not sending a request to release it that is normally sent, or not referencing the authorization in their subsequent charges for items shipped -- I've yet to see you say so. Indeed, it looks like their rep just said they did reference the original authorization in both the subsequent charges. What more do you want? If you have a problem, take it up with your bank, who has the ultimate say over what your available balance is at any given moment.

 

[Melicertes]

Regardless of whatever systems information degrees/experience you may have, you really don't get how this financial stuff works in your context, do you? LP can reference the original authorization ID on each subsequent charge they apply until they're blue in the face, and they can even send whatever communications they like about how the original authorization should be released, but no merchant has any direct control over your bank. And whether and when the reduction in your available balance represented by the original authorization is released/falls off is solely within the control of your bank. Whether anything LP says about this stuff even gets passed along to your bank is complicated by the addition of Paypal to the transaction.

If you have some evidence that LP failed to do something it could have done in the normal course of business to remove the authorization -- like not sending a request to release it that is normally sent, or not referencing the authorization in their subsequent charges for items shipped -- I've yet to see you say so. Indeed, it looks like their rep just said they did reference the original authorization in both the subsequent charges. What more do you want? If you have a problem, take it up with your bank, who has the ultimate say over what your available balance is at any given moment.

You are quite right, I do not deal with this stuff in depth myself because I am a network engineer and a forensic investigator/analyst by profession. I have been coding since I was eight years old (that makes it thirty years now this year that I have been coding) and I write my own software on an ad-hoc basis when needed for for some projects; I also have fairly reasonable development experience in PHP although I would be the first to admit that I have no personal experience with specifically integrating payment systems on e-commerce platforms so far (I have never had the need to get into this). I do not believe that I ever claimed to be any kind of expert on payment systems integration either unless you can please go ahead and point me to any of my posts where I claimed otherwise. While none of my core competencies matter in this discussion really, I have been in the IT industry for 17 years and have worked and managed reasonably large IT teams for International companies on three continents so I consequently have friends, colleagues, and clients that deal in this domain; i.e. e-commerce platforms amongst other things, extensively across the globe. These are the people that I have asked for input about this situation in the light of our discussions here. So unless you are willing to continue to draw my character, credibility as well as that of my sources into question I'd be happy to concede that this is all an argument about nothing and that nobody knows anything about this stuff better than you.

If you have some evidence that LP failed to do something it could have done in the normal course of business to remove the authorization

If you have some verifiable evidence that LP did follow the standard process in the normal course of business to remove the authorization then I am sure we are all ears! Bring it forward and lay the cards on the table mate! Enlighten us please. That is what I asked LP to do right from the start but just got "standard policy" rebuttals. If you are unable to present your posts and comments in a civil, respectful, and congenial manner then I would implore you to keep your self righteous, pompous, and inflammatory comments to yourself. We have had a energetic discussion at times but I do not believe anyone thus far has disrespected anyone until you came along and rapped a few keys on your golden keyboard about pigs and such.

 

[RJP]

Hi Nick,


I realize that you have to attempt to promote and maintain a sparkling image for LP here on your other social media platforms and the fact that you have been responding here tells me that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing and I thank you for that. Please understand that my gripe is not with you or with anyone specifically at LP. My gripe is because there is a procedural issue here that nobody wanted to acknowledge and still will not acknowledge. This is not personal and I have no hidden agenda to somehow sully LP's name and reputation; I do however want to make it clear what happened to me with this transaction since it was a bad experience and I feel we need to talk about it since none of the people I spoke to on the phone seem to be able to look past the semantics of the words used and see the actual impact that happened in practice.


Please do not take my comments below personally. Here we go, one last time with the details...





Upon closer examination the individual banks each seem to have their own policies about holds. US Bank, the bank that my account is held with for the transaction I had problems with, as well as at least one other bank; i.e. Wells Fargo, have confirmed that they view the concept of a preauth hold as setting aside or "sequestering" the funds requested by the merchant during the preauthorization process for the purposes of covering the imminent completion of a transaction. The point of a hold, as I and my bank understands it, is to ensure that the funds are available and will remain available until the order is "settled" and completed and the hold then converts into a charge which posts permanently to my account statement. When the merchant "settles" the transaction the original transaction id has to be referenced when communicating with the payment processor so they know that the "settlement" has to now convert the funds held by the original preauth into a final and permanent charge.

Paypal processed LP's preauth for $463.15 on 09/01. These funds were "sequestered" by my bank on Paypal's request as it should be. LeisurePro then went ahead and charged $213.20 and $249.95 on 09/03. These charges appeared to be independent of the preauth because I see no way that PayPal could have known that the $463.15 was made up of the two smaller amounts $213.20 and $249.95 on their own without receiving information from LP; there must have been some activity from LP that defined what the two smaller charge amounts should be, so this is not PayPal doing something weird at all. This resulted in the two smaller charges being charged to account which rightfully further reduced my available bank account balance while the previous preauth was also still in effect (remember the preauth hold had already "sequestered" the full amount from my available balance during the original preauth process). Therefore, while I may have referred to this situation originally as having been "double-charged" I understand and regret that I ever used this term because that is not what double-charged means in the strictest sense of the term; however, not releasing the preauth hold and then adding the actual real world charges on top amounted in practical terms to what could be considered a "double-charge" for a period of time on my end.


So let me be crystal clear (because it seems all the agents I spoke to on the phone as well as some people here on the forum missed this repeatedly); I am not saying that LeisurePro charged the order twice. I am saying that the preauth does not seem to have been released the way it should have been by LP to prevent the two later, smaller charges after the order split from stacking on top of the already "sequestered" preauth hold amount. This means my available balance was reduced by $926.30 (the original preauth amount plus the two smaller charges added later) as opposed to just the $463.15 that it should have been. Had LP released the preauth and then charged the two smaller amounts we would not be speaking about this at all; instead LP's policy seems to be to simply leave the preauth in force and let it eventually fall off", expire, time out, whatever you choose to call it, by itself and that would tie up my funds for at least 7 business days according to what LP told me on the phone last week (this could have been 30 days according to my bank).


I was not looking for an apology. I need LP to acknowledge that there is a problem with the way this system works. Perhaps this is a series of unusual events that just happened to create the conditions that are just right for this to have happened, but it means that it did happen and should be looked at. It might not affect people that happen to use the same banks you use and that do not seem to "sequester" the funds immediately from your available balance, but there are many other people in the United States that use US Bank, Wells Fargo and I am sure several others who do work this way. LP's lack of closing the loop by first cancelling the original preauth if they decide to split an order into smaller batches will affect those customers that use PayPal (who knows, it might happen even without PayPal in the mix). You might not have a problem with your stuff but I did have one and so I believe the possibility exists for other US Bank and Wells Fargo customers as well. LP's process in this seems to be where the problem started and that is where this should be looked at first. This is why I am kicking up the amount of dust I am kicking up about this. It is not about LP's integrity as a company or any individual person working for LP. This is about a business process that might negatively affect a reasonably large subset of LP's customers (which up to now I have been part of) and it is a business process that needs to be investigated and fixed.



I rest my case on the PayPal issue.

There, that in a nutshell summarizes all the basic elements of this whole debacle in one post. I might still be wrong on much of this stuff and I accept that, but after having spent a significant amount of time talking my bank and various professional developers that design and implement this kind of stuff on a daily basis, the above is the best of what I have come to understand about the situation.


All I want is for LP to stop going cross-eyed when someone mentions the term "double charged" and really look into this issue with an open mind. Don't just ask an in-house programmer in passing to briefly check things out and then leave it be. I mean really go look at this process and make sure that this is not a procedural issue on LP's side because that is what I have come to believe this is. If it turns out that all is golden then so be it then I will point the black finger to PayPal and call them the Black Sheep of shame.

---------- Post added September 11th, 2013 at 08:02 PM ----------



I had just over $1,000 in my online spending account. I placed the order with LP and the preauth hold went into effect reducing the available funds by $463.15 and left about $500 or so as available funds. Two days later two additional charges were added, $213.20 and $249.95 respectively, which further reduced my available balance to around $70-ish. When the preauth hold was eventually released 72 hours later after I kicked up some dust about this with LP, PayPal and here, the available balance on the account went back up to around $500.

Hope that clarifies it a bit.

---------- Post added September 11th, 2013 at 08:12 PM ----------



Which part of me saying that the preauth hold directly reduced my available balance and continued to affect it for 72 hours after the two additional charges were submitted when the items shipped do you get? I also believe that this would have been much longer had I not started to make a stink about it. Now go back and read the information slowly and carefully before you think you can comment intelligently on what we're talking about.

 

[flots am]

Apparently merchants need to consider adding a disclaimer to their payment options, something along the lines of: 'If you do not/cannot grasp the logistical issues that can arise with using a third-party payment system to facilitate a transaction paid for by a bank through your credit card account, or even with just having the bank manage your credit card account as it sees fit, please stop now. Make payment using some other means -- like cash, money order, or cashier's check -- and accept the attendant delays. We do not and cannot control what your bank does with authorizations on your account, or when it does these things.'

Actually, Leisurepro's sales processing system was implemented improperly, or Paypal is brain-dead. Either is possible, although I'm going with the first one. Paypal is greedy and hard to deal with, but not stupid.

The capture (done when shipping the product(s), and which creates the final charge against the OP's account) should have been applied to the initial authorization, not created as a new transaction. This would have charged the OP the correct amount for the correct items and would not have tied up double the sale amount until the authorization expired.

Source: I write payment processing systems for websites.



flots.

 

[Melicertes]

Methinks thou art articulating it precisely accurately! I have been wanting to stop barking about this now for a while and so I shall!
/me goes to his kennel to nap...

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

^^ Posting is somewhat of an addiction, we should probably invent a 12 step program for it