CDF Mod Dinner - Resturant may have over charged

[Dwain]

Those that were @ Pomodoro Cafe please check your receipt against what your bank has on file. I was over charged.

According to my receipt and what the bank has on file are two different things.

According to POMODORO CAFE' the credit card companies have been over charging or slipping additional fee's in. So watch your charges closely, it seems that this is happening more during the holiday season.

Keep your receipts and don't through them away.

[Dwain]

I'm with Bank of America they said that they will have to wait until the final post. Currently it is in pending, but they flaged it.

Apparently this has been happening to tons of people over the holiday season.

[Bill Rotella]

We need to inform Pomodora's Management that this is happening if someone is steeling. I will give them a call today. I know the Manager and he would be very upset and has great pride in the quality of the food. Unfortunately there are some bad folks out there, like the people who are steeling money and credit cards from the tsunami victims. :-(

Bill Rotella

[Anonymous]

i was a manager for a resturant for a few years and ran into this problem with bank of america and they told me over the phone that the over charge is a securement and my customers will only be charged the proper amount once the transaction was final.

[Dwain]

I had already called and talked to the manager... But before I can take this any further if need be I will have to wait till it comes out of the pending transaction list. I have never known this to happen in the past for my transactions. With credit card fraud so prevalent now I keep an eye on all transactions

[Anonymous]

the securement charge may only happen when a credit or debit is used in a specific resturant. i had many customers that complained of the same thing and had never seen it before. the bank gave me an explination that the securement was to allow for a tip to be placed on the credit/debit transaction but from the amount that they secured on patrons credit/debit accounts could not cover even a cheap tipper. i hope everthing pans out for you. i guess we all need to keep a close eye on our banks activities from now on.

[Genesis]

Yeah, its fairly common. If you go rent a room at a hotel, they will typically place a hold for a couple hundred bucks beyond the price of the room on the card.

That is cleared when the matching transaction comes in for the same authorization number. Same is commonly done with restaurants when they run the card, then the transaction is closed when you finalize the check (with tip) - but the "hold" for that is typically done at 20% of the total in the case of a restaurant.

Hotels are known for placing outrageously large holds against your card that you use for check-in, compared to the room price. They justify this as "security" against you running up a big phone bill in the room or similar "on property" charges, but in nearly all cases the holds are rediculously large compared to any reasonable expectation of "on property" charges you could incur. There is nothing you can do to defend against this except use American Express Charge (NOT "Blue") cards for all hotel check-ins, which have no "fixed" credit limit.

Where this can bite you HARD is that the authorization counts against your credit limit until the transactions that match clear, and that can take 5-7 business days! So let's say you have a $2,000 credit limit, and stay in five hotels sequentially over five days. Its entirely possible for you to get declined at the last hotel, even though the total charges in real dollars for the four previous nights are only $250 or so and you have $2,000 available in real credit on the card!

My card has not yet cleared the charge from the restaurant, but I will be watching it..... it should clear in another couple of days, at which point I will match it against the copy I have in my wallet and post back here if there's a discrepancy.

[sdenney]

There are a few different "blue" cards from amex. Mine is a blue card, but doesn't say BLUE on the front. My card allows for overages on charges with no problem, but I think it is limited to 5 percent of my credit limit. So at $2000, I am allowed an overage of $100.

The two other "blue" cards are the one with BLUE (or BLUE CASH) printed on the front, and the other one which is not translucent.

[Genesis]

Right now, having just got back from my trip down there, I am showing close to $500 worth of unmatched "holds" on my Discover.....

Its not a problem given my limit, but if you had a low-limit card, you'd definitely run up against it if you were carrying any kind of balance (I don't!)

[Genesis]

The charge for the dinner has cleared my card, and is correct.