Visa card charged without authorisation

[capall]

My understanding was that the whole idea of chip and pin with visa was that an organisation didnt retain yor visa card details and in this way your card details were more secure

I stayed in a hotel and paid by visa and made a verbal booking for the next week. They didnt take any preauthorisation swipe of my card for this and i never gave them my visa card number
Yet they have been able to charge a cancellation fee to my card

I dont understand this , how can they have done that if I only ever used my card with the pin machine.

 

[Complainer]

Might be worth raising the issue with the Data Protection Commissioner. Obviously, the retained your CC number, and used it to put through a 'cardholder not present' transaction for the cancellation fee.

 

[capall]

What I am puzzled about is how they physically were able to retain the number , I thought you couldnt do that with the chip and pin machines. If you can what is the point from the consumers point of view, you might as well hand over your credit card as before ,there is no additional security for the card holder

 

[bond-007]

They have their copy of the transaction slip. That is how they kept your number.

 

[Towger]

And chip and PIN so only to protect the card company, not you.

 

[capall]

The transaction slip does not print the full visa number and it does not have your authorisation code on it
In this case the interests of the card company and card holder is the same , to reduce the risk of unauthorised charges to your account

 

[bond-007]

The transaction slip does not print the full visa number and it does not have your authorisation code on it

The merchants copy does.

 

[DublinTexas]

Hotels always retain your credit card number so that they are able to charge any additional after you checked out.

If you for example did not give them the full extent of the mini bar consumption they can charge you later on the same transaction. There are guidelines from the credit card processor companies as to how long that are permitted but they are able.

Most hotels these days store the credit card info in a customer file so that you can do “express check-in” and when you made a verbal reservation they used your credit card info in that file to guarantee your reservation. Once you did not show up they charged the appropriate fee.

Now obviously they should have told you about the cancelation terms when you made the verbal reservation but that are a different story.

And as Towger said, Chip & PIN is for the protection of the credit card company and not you.