Bill Matrix is a phone credit card processor. Yesterday I made a phone payment with them, and on the first attempt I miskeyed the information and it was declined....no problem, press one to try again.

The second time it was approved and they gave me a confirmation number. I checked by bank account and see they took it out twice.

:eek: WHAT?:eek:

I immediately call them and they tell me that the card prcessing is a two-step process. First they take the credit card info and put a hold on the funds, then get approval. Since i made a mistake, the approval didn't come, BUT they still have a hold on the funds for 3 days. They put ANOTHER hold on it the second time around.

So, the bank says they can't do anything about it, and I cannot use my money until probably wednesday.

Is this the way it is supposed to work, or was the customer service rep giving me a line of bull? How can they deny access to MY money when they did not receive approval from Visa yet? Does this mean I can call them and put all kinds of holds on people's money by simply keying in the wrong info?

This just doesn't see right to me.

Was the Visa a debit card issued by your bank (account)? If so, then more than likely.

I can undestand the part about putting a hold on your money - this is called a pre-authorization. This allows the merchant just to make sure that you have a specific amount of money available. So that is the approval from the bank.

Using these pre-auths on a debit card is really horriifc in my opinion. It used to happen to me all the time. I remember I bought something about 6 years ago using my Visa debit card. They did a pre-authorization, which took the $250 out of my checking account. The next day they did the post-authorization / sale which took another $250 out of my checking account. And then a day or two later the pre-auth ($250) was returned.

But since you made a mistake - I am not certain why a pre-auth was done.