Warning about money coming off before despatch!

[tootsieannie]

To anyone who has used "Named Delivery date" to order items.

I have just placed an order for £95.00 and as the money wont be in the bank till Friday I though I would pay extra for named delivey for on the following Monday so that it would be processed Friday when money went in.

I went through the checkout process and had to go through the "Verified by Visa" during the checkout process (which some banks do to make sure you are who you say) and I thought that would be ok. I then went online to check my bank and discovered I had £95 less available in in my balance.

I phoned Gems and apparantly if you checkout "online" your bank will "earmark" the funds immediatly and that is the reason. I paid the extra for Named day delivery and I feel a bit cheated as he said there was nothing he could do apart from change delivey to normal and it would be sent out now. He said that this doesnt happen if you order on the phone however some items like the ones I purchased from the web cannot be ordered over the phone

If you had low funds and this happened you could be left short and end up overdrawn! I hope this helps anyone considering ordering over the web. It may also be advisable in future to try checkout on the phone if you dont want to lose item from your basket but dont have the funds at the time when you checkout.

HTH

Toots

 

[Meeshoo]

Hi Toots

Don't panic - the money hasn't been taken. This happened to me too the other week.

What happens is that although the bank "earmarks" the money, it doesn't actually come off your balance BUT it does come off your available funds. So, for example, say you have £100 in your account and your order is for £50, your Bank will allocate £50 for 3-5 working days to GemsTV. So you'll then only be allowed to spend the other £50 in your account.

Top Tip Number 1
If this is going to cause you a problem, you can phone your Bank and tell them to remove the authorisation. They will do it but you may get the "if GemsTV ask for the money, we've promised it to them so they'll get it" but you know that GemsTV won't take it until the day before delivery so that's not a problem. They then release the £50 so it's available for you to use elsewhere!

Top Tip Number 2
For future, the way around this is to take your cheapest item and check it out using named delivery. You go through the authorisation process but the amount allocated is for the cheapest item only. You can then add to your order with the other bits and pieces without going through the banking process!!!

It's a real pain but TJC and others do the same as well. :down:

Hope that's helped.

 

[tootsieannie]

Hi Meeshoo

Thank you so much for explaining that, I am very grateful and will certainly use your tips in the future. I knew the money would be held in the "virtual nowhere land" for the next few days as I have had this before with bookings at the Holiday Inn but I never knew that the bank could remove it. I will certainly phone and ask them to do this.

It is actually PEARLYQUEENS fault that I have shopped at Gems, I saw her "Bargain Haulage" in another post and had to have a look and ended up with a few things in my basket because I thought some of her "haul" was stunning for the price and couldnt resist either!

I normally buy from TJC and recently Rocks as Ive found Gems are not very competative on their pricing compared to the others! I must say though that some of the clearance silver items are just amazing for the price!

Thanks again for the info, Im off to phone the bank now to see if they can remove the earmark from my account,]

best wishes

Toots

 

[luckyluciano]

the other way to get round this is either a speak to customer service and get nice sympathtic person and get them to open order to add to or make order on phone and then add