In message , at 21:22:56 on Thu, 14
May 2009, Stephen Furley remarked:
Something else that I'm not totally happy about is the way it works at the
hotel I stayed at recently. When you check-in they obtain 'pre
authorisation' for an amount equal to the cost of the room plus £30, and for
this you have to enter a PIN. When you check out they charge the actual
amount to your card, and for this you again have to enter the PIN. As far as
I could see there was nothing on the screen to indicate whether this was a
'Pre-authorisation', or an actual charge. I did check my account, and it
does seem to work the way they say it does, only one amount was taken, but
it should always be very clear to the customer exactly what they are
authorising when they key in the PIN, and it isn't.

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...
--
Roland Perry

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'd still check, though, to make sure they didn't do it wrong.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

Neil Williams wrote:
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.

On the occasions I've been asked to provide a card for authorisation in
a hotel, it's generally said "Pre-Auth" (or similar) on the display on
the PED.

On a similar subject, I went into a branch of NatWest last week to pay a
cheque in, over the counter, and was asked to use Chip & PIN to confirm
the deposit. That's a new one on me.

Cheers,

Barry

In article ,
(Barry Salter) wrote:

Neil Williams wrote:
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.

On the occasions I've been asked to provide a card for
authorisation in a hotel, it's generally said "Pre-Auth" (or
similar) on the display on the PED.

On a similar subject, I went into a branch of NatWest last week to
pay a cheque in, over the counter, and was asked to use Chip & PIN
to confirm the deposit. That's a new one on me.

I generally pay cheques in at cash machines these days.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 00:04:21 on Sun, 17
May 2009, Barry Salter remarked:
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.

On the occasions I've been asked to provide a card for authorisation in
a hotel, it's generally said "Pre-Auth" (or similar) on the display on
the PED.

The thing that was strange was being asked for a PIN - that's the first
time a pre-authorisation has worked like that (and I've stayed in
literally hundreds of hotels). But C&P is beginning to spread - I had to
use a PIN to pay my hotel bill for the first time in Geneva earlier this
week, and oddly they didn't ask for a CC when I checked in (although
they had a number via the booking agency to guarantee the booking, but
that doesn't normally stop people asking again).

On a similar subject, I went into a branch of NatWest last week to pay
a cheque in, over the counter, and was asked to use Chip & PIN to
confirm the deposit. That's a new one on me.

Any card, or one of theirs?
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 00:04:21 on Sun, 17
May 2009, Barry Salter remarked:
On a similar subject, I went into a branch of NatWest last week to pay
a cheque in, over the counter, and was asked to use Chip & PIN to
confirm the deposit. That's a new one on me.

Any card, or one of theirs?

My Maestro card...Presumably to ensure the deposit is credited to the
correct account, as there's no manual input of account details. Though,
of course, it's still possible for the clerk to enter the wrong amount.

Cheers,

Barry

In message , at 16:56:01 on Sun, 17
May 2009, Barry Salter remarked:
On a similar subject, I went into a branch of NatWest last week to
pay a cheque in, over the counter, and was asked to use Chip & PIN
to confirm the deposit. That's a new one on me.
Any card, or one of theirs?

My Maestro card...Presumably to ensure the deposit is credited to the
correct account, as there's no manual input of account details.

When I pay in at NatWest they appear to run my dead-tree paying-in slip
through a reader, and that's how the destination account is established.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 16:56:01 on Sun, 17
May 2009, Barry Salter remarked:
My Maestro card...Presumably to ensure the deposit is credited to the
correct account, as there's no manual input of account details.

When I pay in at NatWest they appear to run my dead-tree paying-in slip
through a reader, and that's how the destination account is established.

Did they require a PIN? I can see that reading the details off the chip are
a quick way of reading the account number, but I can't see any reason why
the PIN would be involved.

It's part of a more pernicious trend, which is to make it impossible for
anyone other than the account holder to pay into a account. The Post Office
require a Chip & PIN transaction just for cash credits... bonkers.

Theo

"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

On May 26, 6:21*pm, "tim....." wrote:

"Neil Williams" wrote:

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.

In the latter case, surely the original sum had not actually been
deducted but had instead just been pre-authorised - when it came to
paying the bill after you returned the car then the original pre-
authorisation should then have been cancelled (though as has been
discussed this doesn't always happen as it should).

If you had to enter a PIN a second time at the car hire place when you
got the bill, then it seems they were using a different procedure from
the hotel - the car hire firm cancelled the original pre-authorisation
and started a new transaction, whilst the hotel tapped into the
original pre-authorisation as the basis for the final transaction.