Card rejected but customer still charged

[Maverick]

Below are snippets from an e-mail I received from one of our customers...

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I placed an order with you Sunday online. My Visa/Debit card I used was rejected several times. Until I resorted to my other Visa card to final complete the transaction. I was shocked to find, my debit account was charged 6 times the purchase price this morning. If a purchase/[payment is rejected why is it charged, even temporarily??? Now I'm out $25 for NSF and this jar has cost me $60!!!
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Any ideas what would cause this to happen?

Thanks,
Rodney

[Jim]

ANY / ALL Credit/debit card transaction will have a hold put on funds for a certain period of time (usually 2-3 days but may be longer) or until the transaction is either processed or voided. You can usually find this in the fine print of your credit/debit cart agreement.

When ShopSite receives the transaction information from the payment gateway that the transaction is not OK the cart usually send a void transaction to cancel the hold, but not all payment gateways offer that option. Also some payment gateways authorize the transaction (put a hold on the amount of the transaction) even if the transaction is declined. In the case of declined transactions ShopSite prompts the shopper with the card declined message but the gateway may not release the authorization even though they told ShopSite that the transaction was not good.

The only way to find out how your payment gateway functions in this regard is to contact the gateway and ask them specifically how they handle holds on declined transactions.

[Maverick]

Thanks Jim