"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 May 2009 11:53:26 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

That reminds me - I stayed at a foreign hotel about a month ago and they
insisted on making a 10-euro test-payment using their C&P machine. This
was for "extras" and in fact I didn't incur any. When I checked out
there was some confusion about whether or not the 10-euros needed to be
explicitly refunded, or whether it just "expired" in some strange way. I
must check my statements...

I've seen that - it seems that while taking the "swipe"
(pre-authorisation for things like the minibar) some badly-designed
terminals show it as an actual purchase with an amount and require a
PIN, but it isn't an actual transaction and doesn't go on the
statement.

I've just made a payment on check out of a hotel and queried why I didn't
have to enter my PIN. I was told that I had already done this during the
pre-authorisation process, so it seems that this operation is deliberate.

Back to Roland's question, I recently had to make an over-estimated
prepayment for car hire for which they said the excess would be "refunded"
when I returned. I was expecting to have aggro over how the exchange rate
affected this proceed (as believe it or not, the rate changed 10% in the 10
days that I had the car). But when the bill came it seems that this wasn't
the process at all and that the initially deducted sum had "expired" and a
new transaction processed for the actual amount owing.

tim