**Heads up** Possible Connection ? Strange Banking Behavior and DENIED SALES
 

Hey Guys I want to share something really interesting that happened with an online purchase that really gives a shit load of support to my theory that the banks are behind the scenes engaging in subtle and not so subtle forms of fraud to cover their short positions!!!

Before you flame or insult know that I am not angry today or bitter, I am trying to illustrate a sound assertion with facts and actual details. Here is the story..

On april 9th 2012 We made an online purchase for a camera battery. We entered credit card details, submitted payment, order was approved and we received confirmation of order and shipping time frame.

Now Immediately after the purchase as we do with all online purchases we verify every transaction, and we log into our online banking and the $18.99 for the camera battery was deducted from our available balance and right next to the deduction was the name of the company who sold us the battery.

Right everything normal so far?

Well the batter was scheduled to arrive on april 10th or april 11th and it never showed up.
On april the 17th ....nine days after the transaction was approved and funds deducted we receive the following email from the company...

"Hi, Thank you for placing an order with EastCoastPhoto.com.

We would like to ship the order out however there seems to be a problem with the credit card number or expiration date provided. Please verify the numbers and advise necessary changes.

Please respond ASAP so we can process your order promptly."

So we respond excuse me but you guys are making a mistake those funds were taken out of our account, and we were given a confirmation that payment was received and order was getting shipped out.

Mean while that money is still missing from our account.

So on april 19th we see a weird transaction in our bank account that was labeled a "card purchase return" and it was a deposit of the full $18.99 for the battery we ordered 10 days earlier!

So lets recap...

We made an online purchase as a customer and a *APPROVAL* was given to us by the bank for the transaction, funds were taken from the account.

Merchant never received our payment, and we never received our product.... Case and point a 3rd PARTY SOME HOW FUCKS OVER A VALID MERCHANT AND VALID CUSTOMER where the customer does not get what he/she ordered and the merchant does not get PAID for what they sold...

and the best part of course is the 3rd PARTY HELD THOSE FUNDS FOR 10 DAYS to do who knows what or to cover a short position somewhere!

Now we call the bank today and ask for a logical explanation and the bank rep says this...

"Wow I am floored, that is soooo weird I have never seen that since I have been in banking, I honestly do not know what to tell you but I do not blame you for watching your transaction like that"

So could there be a connection that accurately reflects whats been happening on many occasions in our world of adult with weird transactions...sproratic chargebacks, approvals turned into denials, denials turned into approvals,etc.

I already know what I know and this is just another of dozens of examples that I lay out as to why we need oversight, transparency, and verification with any financial institue and quite frankly we need a billing over haul

This is outside of adult and it is the same thing we experience almost daily now. Customer has funds and wishes to transact...merchant has goods and services and wishes to transact... 3rd party who ***PROCESSES*** transaction holds money in limbo for days while merchant and customer get screwed and 3rd party covers their short position at the behest of everyone else!

This is 100% truth we observe this as customers and merchants, and its only getting worse, and the very ones who have done the damage to the industry are the very ones trying to dictate,control,and regulate every facet of transacting in the industry.

Disclaimer I did not start this thread to cause drama, or attack anyones company as no names have been mentioned.

My sincere intent was to help try and show a pattern and a possible connection as to why it is becoming harder and harder to transact online for everyone and how a 3rd party could potentially take your money as a customer and use it while you wait for a product that will never come.

And of course the conclusion of the conversation with the bank rep was this..."I am sorry to not have any explanation as to why that happened" ............LOL

They never have an explanation so we have to figure it out for ourselves and when you do figure it our for your self they get extremely upset and uncomfortable because only they are supposed to be cunning and creative with the chicanery.

So we have to go and re order the product and hope this does not happen again but in the mean time you have been informed about a clever technique that you may not have been aware of. Thanks for your time:)

Who processed the card transaction? Have you called them? DERP.

Thats a pretty crazy thing to have happened with nobody explaining it. I guess you should contact the third party processor on the phone if possible. Would be nice to show them the exact details, screenshots of transactions, copies of emails, logs of bank conversations and get an explanation.

edit: Oh, and how about the company who's name is on your credit card as well? Perhaps they would be interested to know or provide a "sometimes blah blah blah happens" reply. Debit mastercard or whatever.

Did the company you bought from ask for more info or did the CC company send to them to ask for more info.

Maybe the Company did not like that the address showed as a NON exact match or something along those lines so they decided to ask for it to CYA.

If the CC company sent to them to ask for it, then I am 100% behind you on the idea.

Yes the bank needed your $20 to "cover a short position". I mean it's the only logical explanation. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

EastCoastPhoto.com is the one who we ordered the battery from....we spoke to them today also and they said they received the order but did not receive the payment.

She said their system is 100% automated and they never touch credit card data..

We explained that somebody recieved payment and most likely it was our bank covering their own short position as we have seen this a time or two before and we have spoken to others who have had payments taken out of their accounts and *DISSAPPEARED* for days only to be returned with no explanation

Again the troubling part is the bank has no explanation as to where the $18.99 was for 8 days!

we didn't have our monies for 8 days....the east coast photo company did not have our monies for 8 days, did mallick have our monies for 8 days?

someone had those monies for 8 days but nobody knows....LOL

Well genius maybe not cover their *short* position with just my 20 bucks but what if the same thing happened to 1000 different transactions that day 1000 x 20 bucks = $20,000....then you might be able to temporarily cover a *short* position genius and thats more than logical, if you are a banker and you are crafty and you can manage the risk of jerry rigging a few transactions the possibilites are endless aren't they genius.

and by the way if you don't accept my theory cool, I would love to know what is really going on here....but again the bank has no explanation they are the ones who held the monies last....the merchant has no explanation they never got the monies...

so don't blame the victim or customer who is us in this case for coming up with out own theory...

I would love to hear any realistic theory just explain it someone,anyone, bueller

Even if the account shows the debit and the transaction is "approved" that does not mean the funds are settled.

There was a discrepancy with the settlement so the transaction was reversed. You got your money back in your account. NO real money was ever exchanged.

what's so weird about that?

Well on the phone call with the bank, did you ask them to escalate your issue to someone more knowledgable? Sounds like the phone answering clerk just said "gee I am so sorry" and that was it. Try again.

Hey KRosh what is troubling to us if you can look at it from this perspective...

Normally my gripes on gfy are from the merchant perspective, in this instance I am the customer attempting to transact and purchase a product I really need.

Purchase was made, funds were taken from my card/or account however you view it, and money was missing for 8 days.

The money was never sent to the merchant, so the merchant lost out on a sale, the customer who was me lost out on a product, as well as forfeited 20 bucks for a period of 8 days so someone else was holding that 20 for 8 days as it was not in our bank acount.

I can see if it were held for 24 hours, or even 48 hours but to hold 20 bucks for 8 days then send it back into my account as a merchant return when the merchant never got it?

Then to add insult to injury I just wanted an explanation which is what customer serivce is for, and they say I have never seen this happen and I do not have any explanation as to where you money was for 8 days?

that is a tad bit troubling, and as a merchant I have to wonder about some of the many failed attempted purchases made by my customers. This was a failed transaction, we had funds and tried to purchase...the company had the product and tried to sell...but somewhere in the process was a glitch,a bug, a ghost, a corrupted swift file from the satellite server.

You see the only one who can answer the question was the bank and they said they have no explanation so what am I to do...

Its water under the bridge but it certainly helps illustrate a number of my whole arguments about too much control and secrecy with respect to 3rd parties governing transactions.

Now it may help you to understand it better if I tell you the same thing happened to a friend who tried to make a truck payment thru the same bank, and his $800.00 truck payment came out of his bank account, and was paid as far as he knew.

Then 2 weeks later a repo man shows up to repo his truck, he has to go and pull bank statement to show his truck payment was taken from his account from his bank.

The bank again had no valid explanation...must have been a glitch....LOL one hell of a glitch

I had this happen a few months ago. Made a purchase for online for car audio stuff. Payment went threw, approved and withdrew from my account. 5 days later same company had deal on more stuff so i spent another more money. 2 days later i log in im over drawn by something like $850. I go look back and the first was gone from my account and they posted it to my account same day ad my next purchase.

So i had to eat all of the shipping charges back for the second purchase and they hit me with the over limit fee fuckers :disgust

So now if i know im gonna make a purchase i just fund a prepaid card. BOA will not be pulling that shit on me again :thumbsup

Yep tampatoker I know the drill they played the old shuffle the transaction posting order to generate fee game with you....what I noticed when you look a banker in the eye and say to them "I am aware of your transaction order shuffling scehme because I saw a documentary on it"

when you say that to them they turn into a deer in headlights and its so fun to watch their reaction at that point they are like look I just work here, I don't make the rules...LOL

But lately we have had so many denials that were labeled "transaction denied by bank"

I had to make this post because as a customer this transaction was some how denied by our bank.

And as critical as I have been of 3rd party billers, I now understand that *some* of the strangeness I have seen over the years could have and most likely should have been blamed on banks and not the billers. Again I said *some* things....LOL

I'm confused. A transaction was attempted... funds were placed on hold. Poor language led the psycho to believe the money was "taken from her account", then the transaction never went through and those funds were again released back to her account and somehow this means... The bank is trying to steal 18.00?

I don't think you should ever be banned from this forum. Your brand of comedy is actually quite refreshing and a nice change from the 9/11 conspiracy nuts of your general variety.

cliff notes?

No offense but you don't seem to have a clue about the mechanics of banking. I don't have time to teach you all this stuff, but if you are REALLY interested in knowing what's going on and not merely in yelling from a soapbox about things you don't seem to know anything about , I would suggest you do some studying. I would look up things like "ledger balance", as opposed to "Tier 1 assets", "overnight lending", and how "taking a short position" actually works.

As for glitches in ledger balances, they happen all the time without any funds actually changing hands to anyone, and there is no way to "cover a short" with ledger balances.



I really think that if you are so passionate about this subject you really should take some time and effort to actually learn how it all works. It will give you campaigning a little more weight.



.

Don't bother. I have seen funds clear my bank and then mysteriously reverse themselves within a 2 hour time frame due to fraud. It happens with online transactions, it can happen with checks.

This guy is a clown.

my brand of comedy is amusing to you lol....I made no attempt at humor what so ever and I am glad that you absorbed a chuckle.

However you just demonstrated to me in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS as well as many who have their head screwed on straight when you suggest I am no different than a 911 conspiracy nut...LOL

Truth be told we are truth seekers and we are most certainly passionate about the truth no matter how pretty or unflattering it is... as far as 911 goes what is comedy is the story that was told to the world by the government and how many sheep actually accepted it hook line and sinker without being able to explain building 7.

I won't even insult you as I clearly understand who you ally yourself with someone like a shill o reilly or somebody who calls truth seekers and critical thinkers conspiracy nuts...I actually take that as a badge of honor to be called a conspiracy nut.

Thankyou may I have another?

Well I would not take offense but you just prefaced your offending comment "no offense" and then proceeded to offend me...

why I don't get it...I shared a true story, added an opinion or 2 of my own....did not step on your toes personally but called into practice the actions of a bank?

Why would that offend you? Are you a banker of some sort....do you hold other peoples monies, do you "process" other peoples monies?

The concept of money is very simple and elementary what is not elementary is the concept of credit, fiat currency and federal reserve notes.

I do not want to derail the thread so to get back on track, I was sharing details about a strange banking transaction that the bank called strange, the merchant called strange, and me the customer called strange.

Now share it with gfy and the usual asshat or two comes in and tries to insist I am an attention whore or crazy, or whatever..its just childish.

But yeah 20 bucks disappeared from our account for 10 days and no one knew where it was for 10 days. Thats the lesson here, and it should not matter if it was 20 bucks or 20 grand, it was gone and not accounted for for 10 days.

The bank did not have it, the merchant did not have it, the customer did not have it during the 10 days...

I ask again did maillick have it? because somebody had it? Somebody needed that 20 bucks more than myself and the merchant we made the purchase with.

I thought it would be interesting to share because of so many transactions being "denied by bank" lately

Sounds like the money was put on hold due to the mixup (whatever it was), and after 8 days and no verification it was simply put back into your account.

Sara, I'm not sure I'd read more into it than a simple screw up.

Several years ago I rented a car, credit card accepted, drove away.

While I HAD the car some bank somewhere (not mine) claimed there was a problem and refunded my money.

Nobody from the rental agency contacted me, I brought the car back at the end of the agreed rental period and asked no questions.

Never heard another word about it.

One who is seeking the truth doesn't begin with a conclusion and then seek evidence to support that conclusion. That is the mind of a sick person.

You are GFY comedy. A sideshow. A lunatic suffering from paranoid delusions, low IQ and who has the added bonus of a ridiculous temper and problem with impulsiveness. A betting man would put his money on drug/alcohol dependency and a victim of serious abuse. But then again, confronting your issues would deprive us of continued comedy so i'm kinda hoping you don't seek help as this board seems to be slowing down.

for the record, I have a drink Maybe 3-4 times a year, and do not do drugs of any type, never have, and never been abused but since you posted it on gfy it must be valid


We know and understand a little bit about your personality type as well...A betting man would also be prudent in wagering that you have taken some of the below snippets out of the shilling 101 manuscript...

1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil- head in the sand.

2. Become incredulous and indignant.

3. Create rumor monger name calling.

4. Use a straw man

5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule

6. Hit and Run.

7. Question motives.

8. Invoke unearned authority.

9. Play Dumb.

10. Associate opponent with charges from old news.

11. Establish and rely upon fall-back positions.

12. Use Enigmas that have no solution.

13. Alice in Wonderland Logic.

14. Demand complete solutions.

15. Fit the facts to alternate conclusions.

16. Vanquish evidence and witnesses.

17. Change the subject.

18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents.

19. Ignore proof presented, demand impossible proofs

20. Provide their own False evidence.

21. Call a Grand Jury, Special Prosecutor, or other "empowered" investigative body on the board.

22. Manufacture a new truth.

23. Create bigger distractions.

24. Silence critics, critical thinking, at all costs.

Now that we know your favorite manuscript would you consider innovating new and more exciting smear tactics, and surrender the antiquated outdated, belated horrendous grade school poor humor?

All of this because I illustrated how money was taken from my account and missing for *10* days with no explanation?

I also showed that this unexplainable glitch produced a failed transaction that negatively affected two small businesses who could of benefited from the transaction being successful.

No one that's ever read your bizarre and manic ramblings would suggest you are even remotely close to sane. That said, keep doing what you do. Crazy people never think they're crazy which is the source of great comedic irony.

Don't change. This place needs you.

SwirlsChick

Wheres this doc u have a link?? Curious to see it i know banks do this tons.

could be a large number of things...

your card could of thrown up a red flag to the processor as high risk.

their credit card gateway may of hit a max quota per month/quarter and you just happened to fall within the amount

your credit card might of not been "qualified" meaning they may have to pay 1,2, or 5% more on top of what they normally get

... etc.

if everything matched on your end, its most likely some processing issue or they didn't want your business. i just went to buy a transmission pan from this company and they held my money for 10+ days telling me they were processing it, only to find they were out of stock and trying to hold onto my money.

That's not good at all for several reasons... I don't think I need to point out why.

I heard this is random reserves the banks add to 5% to 15% of their transactions that they initially decline, they hold the monies hostage for up to 15 days and use them to cover the refunds of illegal ins fees coming from shufling the transaction order.
It increase the liquid capital of the bank with 5 to 15%.... imagine how many dollars that is for let's say bank of america!!
On top of that they can with this option when done to low balance accounts charge extra fees.... imagine that.... charge you to have you lend them money...!
They own your soul and they pimp it out for big steaks and expensive wine... ofcourse your banker will say "wow I never ever in my entire life and career seen something like this!!

I smell a class action lawsuit coming any day! I bet the first person can setlle and receive a fortune !

Are you really this stupid, seriously?

It's gotta be a conspiracy, because a vendor couldn't possibly have bad data, a transaction could never be on authorization hold and not cleared, or ANY OTHER NUMBER OF SITUATIONS.

Donny should take note of you because I think it might shake his belief in a god as supreme designer based on complexity. Because universal complexity - your simpleness = approximately zero.

Basically you don't know what is going on at all so your search for an answer won't make sense either. Essentially you are wrong and the credit card company is not evil or broken.

someone doesn't understand banking

that's it really

Why would EastCoastPhoto.com be asking for your credit card number / expiration date again? And why nine days later?

Seems to me, and this may the crux of your comment, that the 3rd party processor didn't want to release payment to EastCoastPhoto.com ...

However, based on the events you described, that may be a good thing ... the 3rd party processor may have saved you from being defrauded...

EastCoastPhoto.com didn't promptly ship and hence your money was automatically refunded with no action on your part - seems to me the system, in this instance, worked fine.

I cannot find the 10 minute long one I watched last year but here is a link to a video clip that details precisely how the *SCAM* works.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1wbvMpp8vQc

If you keep large balance in your bank account, or do very few transactions, most likely you don't make a good target for the scam.

The scam works best on people who keep a low bank balance and have high transactions plenty of monthly or daily debits and deposits.

They need multiple transactions coming in order to have plausible deniability with the scam. Bankers are masters of the ultimate deception and use barely perceptible techniques in their nickel and dime scams.

Hey Ron thanks for chiming in:)

I certainly appreciate all of the constructive comments.

I felt that after seeing so many failed or denied attempted signups to my website lately, with the "transaction declined by bank" message...

I could not help but wonder if there was a connection. When I examine the details I conclude that there could be some chicanery where banks are suspending or delaying or stalling transactions and leaving merchants and customers hanging in some kind of limbo while they buy themselves time like they did with us (10 days) and use that money for something during the 10 day interim.

Now sure they cannot do much with just my 20 bucks, but if they did this with 100 different accounts and different transaction amounts...

it stands to reason that this could be a tactic that banks and *other* financial companies are using to make up for lost revenue..just a theory

This at its core was another example of how a valid transaction between a merchant and a customer was caused to fail by a 3rd party....and after the very strange and unexplained failed/denied transaction...

you question the 3rd party about why this transaction was failed and the the 3rd party(in this case the bank) has no clue about why it failed, and where your money was for 10 days.

I think it speaks volumes, and I think that 1 failed *good* transaction is one too many. See as the merchant and customer lose out on the good transaction the middle man or bank in this situation holds on to funds for 10 days...

so the 3rd party in fact won in this situation...the merchant and customer got nothing, and the bank got to hold 20 bucks extra revenue for 10 days...thats the subtlety of their victory

Hey Due, you are amazing and thank you for the insight and very well described reason for what could have happened in this instance!

Your theory sounds spot on, and I am so thankful that you contributed in this thread:) :thumbsup

I think common sense and some intellect would dictate that what you described is exactly what happened to us in this situation...

and this boards usual bank worshipers and trolls try in much more vein to conceal and not shed light on dirty little bank tricks.

In this case it's probably the merchant - EastCoastPhoto.com and many other camera/electronics stores pull crap like that a lot. Sometimes they take out the money, then call you to "verify" payment details and then try to upsell you to something else. If you don't bite, they cancel the whole deal. Other times they call you because what you ordered is magically out of stock - which would have been nice to know before you placed your order - but, you guessed it, they have something else to sell you. Stores like this are known for their antics. Reseller Ratings is a good place to check if the store you're about to do business with is legit. This is especially important for camera an electronic stores in the East Coast.
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/East_Coast_Photo

Seriously, what banks do you think are running so close to the margin that they need your $20, or $20,000 or even $200,000 for 10 days to cover "losses"?

US banks are making billions of dollars in profits and you think they're somehow coming up short of the period of 10 or 20 days? It just doesn't make any sense what so ever.

Further, you have no evidence the funds ever went anywhere. They didn't dissapear they simply weren't available to you as there was a merchant pre-auth being held against them.

Your willingness to think Zebras when you should be thinking Horses is over the top paranoia.

Wow that is interesting to read!

I would not discount that they have unhappy customers, but their poor service alone does not explain why my 20 bucks would be missing from my account for 10 days.

If an approval was given for the transaction, and funds were extracted from my account, the funds had to go somewhere!

All I am saying is the merchant east coast photo never got it....we did not have it for 10 days....and there was no kind of *hold* or anything that says *pending* transaction in our account, the monies were poofed...gone!

If you used a credit card, nothing would be missing. Your open-to-buy would be reduced, but no biggie. Using a debit card, is generally more risky, since it can result in the connected bank account getting over-drawn.

The funds went to the 3rd party processor's bank (assuming that's what EastCoastPhoto really uses), -or- quite possibly, they may have their own merchant account, in which case, it likely went into their bank account within a day or two of the transaction settling.

You're assuming they EastCoastPhoto didn't get it, and technically that may be true (ie. if they're paid weekly or whatever by the 3rd party processor), but EastCoastPhoto likely had control over whether they'd eventually get the funds along with control of whether they'd choose to refund, which appears to be what happened in this instance.

Kroy's comment is probably the most accurate scenario I've read in this thread so far ... especially, if all you bought was a $18.99 item, it may not have been worth EastCoastPhoto's time to sell it unless they could aggressively push an upsell to bulk up the purchase.

had a merchant account years ago and used to batch my own payments, visa/mc guaranteed me to be paid so long as i had an auth code and there was never a problem. batch clearing time was 3 days max, typically next day. so i dont know why they jacked off with your funds for 10 days

7 Business days later the funds were returned when the charge was not settled.

in-fucking-credible and not surprising. and we the sheep including politicians let them get away with yet another crime.

It's an AVS mismatch that the merchant mistook for a decline. It happens pretty often and it happens exactly as Sara described, being automatically refunded ten days later.

Yep, that would be twenty THOUSAND dollars if they did that a thousand times. A large bank has two BILLION dollars on hand on any given day.

Actually though, your thinking is it's a $20,000 loan. The federal funds rate is 0.15%, meaning for the bank to borrow $20,000 for ten days costs them $0.08. Yes, eight cents to borrow $20,000 from another bank.

let's look at that in figures:

Do commit fraud for:
8¢
when you have:
200,000,000,000¢

No, when the bank is a little short they just write a $10,000,000 check on their federal reserve account. Borrowing $10 million costs them $41.

You want to know what DID happen? An AVS mismatch, in all likelihood. Some merchants treat an AVS mismatch as a decline, but it's not. ePassporte used to do that. When the AVS doesn't match, the transaction will be flagged as such but it's still a perfectly valid transaction and the money is held out of your account. The merchant sees it's marked as mismatched AVS and THEY decided to ask you to check the address. (Or they didn't see it at all, just misplaced it.) Then when they neither complete the charge by marking it shipped nor refund it, ten days later the bank automatically refunds it.

I've ordered stuff in the past for it to suddenly be out of stock and them ring me and try to sell me something more expensive they have got.:disgust

SaraSwirls make a blog and give us affiliate links too it.

more importantly did the battery work

#42 might explain it.

Holy shit. Wtf is wrong with threadstarter? She's completely mental! And ofcourse now i read she is a truther as well. 1 + 1. Funny how truthers always turn out to be complete nutjobs.

If you got paid per word you'd be a millionaire.

Unreadable.

Ohh I have absolutely no reason to suspect that is what they are actually doing nor is there anything I've seen that will document that.

I had some extra time and spend a few minutes providing possible scenarios for a nice conspiracy theory, then I forgot about this thread and just saw it now. I was looking forward to seeing someone trying to put together a class action lawsuit :help me