CC was "referred" when attempting to order goods with large call centre. This means?

[Binomial]

I was attempting to place an order with a large multinational call centre.

I confirmed that all the order details were correct and gave my credit card details. Some minutes later I called my credit card company to confirm that I was making a rather large purchase. They confirmed with me that the transaction had been authorised. I thought no more of it an assumed that my order was being processed.

Some hours later I checked back with the call centre to find that order was not being processed as it had been "referred". The cc transaction had to be manually processed and had to wait until the following morning when the billing staff started work.

The order was only processed the following morning a full 24 hours after I had thought I had placed the order.

My question is what is "referral", who does the "referral", under what circumstances are cc transactions "referred". And finally when the cc company said that the transaction had been authorised is it possible that it was referred at the same time?

Thanks
BiN

 

[ClubMan]

Perhaps the vendor was either (a) pre authorising the payment on the card in order to "reserve" credit for it or (b) just checking that you card was valid by doing a test transaction (like PayPal do to check CC validity on registration after which they refund the nominal payment)?

 

[ACA]

A certain percentage of all cc transactions are referred. I used to work in a supermarket and customers would be quite worried if their card was referred but, it's nothing to be alarmed about really. If your card had been used a lot that day or as you say it was a large amount of money it could have needed manual authorisation - it protects you more - as if someone had stolen your card , they couldn't charge large amounts without cc company noticing.