[Ben at WEX]

July 4, 2010 at 6:07 pm

Hi Aidan,

Once again I feel the need to clarify the exact circumstances on behalf of Warehouse Express, so let me be perfectly frank and open for the benefit of you and other customers.

You called to place an order and were advised that, because you wanted to place a very high value order from outside the UK (some security checks are only able to verify UK registered cards) and had not ordered with us before, your very first order would need to be paid by bank transfer.

You subsequently placed an order online, via credit card, and the funds were reserved in your account by Netbanks, the online authorisation system.

Because of the reasons explained above, we were unable to accept this payment method and declined the transaction. Unfortunately, and I appreciate your frustration here, this does not automatically return your funds. However, as stated in my previous post, the funds are automatically returned by Netbanks if the payment is not accepted. Whilst this does vary depending on card type and bank, this takes a couple of days at most for UK cards, but slightly longer for non-UK cards.

It is also usually possible for the customer’s bank to remove the reservation and free up the funds if they are urgently required, but as Warehouse Express never actually had the funds, it was not possible for us to return them to you.

As previously said, without any intervention from us or you, the funds would have been released in due course automatically. As you correctly say, your bank did indeed contact us to follow up your enquiry. The end result was that your bank actually spoke to Netbanks who confirmed that the payment had not been accepted. As such, your bank the unfroze your reserved funds in your account.

Although I genuinely appreciate your frustration, I do think there are some important points to be made:
1) You had been advised that we could not accept payment for your first order by credit card.
2) Warehouse Express never had your funds, so there was no benefit to be had by delaying the process.
3) As demonstrated by the fact that it was your bank that unfroze the funds, the payment never left your account, but rather was reserved in it by your bank.

As it stands, the money is back with you and it is only fair to say that this happened slightly faster than usual as a result of your persistence and intervention by your bank. However, please rest assured that we have been open and honest regarding this transaction throughout and there have certainly been no underhand tactics to delay the process – there would be no benefit to us to do so.

Once again, please accept my apologies for any inconvenience that has been caused.

Best regards,

Ben