EFTPOS question

[Trillian]

I did the grocery shopping on Tuesday at Coles. It was 263-odd dollars and I used EFTPOS and got cashout to take the total transaction to $300 neat. Now my problem is, is that the money never came out of our account? It is still there as of today and transactions I made earlier on Tuesday and also yesterday have all been processed. I've also never had this problem with Coles before - could it be due to the floods at all? I remember hearing something about banking issues. We bank with CBA if that makes a differnce?

[Laranna]

Dunno Trill...but I picked up a few things at Woolworths on New Years Eve, only $38 and it only came out yesterday! I had totally forgotten about it too until I saw it on the statement. We're with BankWest (who are owned by CBA).

[Jaycee]

I'm not sure Trill, I bank with CBA as well and all of my transactions are taken out on the spot. I haven't heard of CBA having issues due to the floods.

[Trillian]

No doubt it will catch up with me sooner or later - I couldn't be that lucky LOL, but it's a PITA. I've never had this problem before either - even if it didn't show up on netbanking right away, the money was always taken out straight away.

[~me~]

I thought Eftpos was an immeadiate transaction, as in like you have taken cash out at the ATM?
We are with the Police Credit Union and I shopped this morning at Coles and did what you did and it is out already, the transacation time is the exact time I was putting my card through?

[Visitor7]

Their lines may have been down, which is why it hasn't been debited yet.

[M D]

Did you press credit or savings/cheque? If you pressed credit then it can sometimes bee delayed. If you pressed savings or cheque it should be instant. In saying that if the lines were down there can be a delay - but normally they would tell you that the lines are down.

[Visitor7]

but normally they would tell you that the lines are down.

They should tell you, but not always. On two separate occassions, we've had this happen with Woolworths. One was about 2 months ago, it was finally debited out of our account last week. The other was about 3 weeks ago, no idea when that will be debited.

[Elocin]

We are with NAB and this happens occassionally to us.

If it does come out straight away it says something like 'Transaction $x deducted' and updates later with 'Woolworths $x deducted'...

I would think the delay would probably be due to the floods atm

[Frangipani]

Their lines may have been down at the time of the transaction. Which may mean it might not actually debit for many weeks. I work in a bank and have seen some people get a surprise when it debits- and usually overdraws the account too. So make sure you keep the funds available in your account for when the store reinput the transaction- it can (and I have seen) take sometimes 6-8 weeks to debit but most of the time it is within a week or so (especially with bigger companies). I can imagine how frustrating and inconvenient it is.

[Trillian]

It was definitely savings - I still have the receipt. I guess i will just have to wait and see how long it takes to come out. It's just a PITA.

[BeautifulMadness]

I thought Eftpos was an immeadiate transaction, as in like you have taken cash out at the ATM?
We are with the Police Credit Union and I shopped this morning at Coles and did what you did and it is out already, the transacation time is the exact time I was putting my card through?

Not always as it depends on the stores.....sometimes it takes till the day after which is annoying

[AnyDream]

An an ex-bankie I am able to answer your question. If the system was offline or there was an issue with its processing for whatever reason, the bank dumps/captures all those transactions into a secondary system, which is like a manual back up. They hang around there until the problem is fixed and then it is processed and checked through a back up system. There is some kind of manual process involved. I imagine their systems could be under pressure if the banks have re-routed transactions away from servers in the CBD, so it could be this or just simple phone line issues that caused it, but never fear, they *WILL* take your money!!!

ETA - it's helpful to think about an EFTPOS transaction as an exchange of a chunk of info between your bank and the merchant's bank.

[Rouge]

We can't access our money atm. We are with a credit union and their bank data centre is down. They allowed us to take out $500 emergency funds (apparently this is available to all members), but that's it. We can't do web banking, we can't transfer we can't do a thing. DH went into the branch today and they told him they are waiting for more info from headquarters... which is currently under water in brisbane. So it is possible something is affected. I would definitely contact your bank as they will follow it up eventually iykwim?

[Trillian]

Thanks MD. It still seems odd though that it was just this one transaction with Coles.

Rouge, that would be tough. You must feel like you've lost your wallet kwim? It is an awful feeling not being able to access your money - even if you don't need the money right now, it's like a safety blanket knowing that you can if you wanted to.