From: Graham Murray 
Newsgroups: uk.railway uk.finance
Subject: Re: Declined...
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:48:16 +0000
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W14_Fishbourne  writes:

> Avantix Mobile does not handle on-line authorisation so as soon as a
> card asks for authorisation it aborts the transaction. Other ticket
> machines are dependent on the comms links to the card authoriser
> working correctly. Any failure of the TOC's wide or local area
> networks could mean that this isn't the case. Similarly, high levels
> of usage could create a bottleneck in the process which causes
> transactions to time out.

Why does the system not seem to be able to differentiate between 'unable
to authorise' and authorisation being refused? In both cases the
merchant is just told that the payment has been 'declined'. What makes
this bad is that some companies have a policy of charging a 'penalty' to
your account if you pay your invoice/statement by credit or debit card
and it is declined (the same as if a cheque or direct debit
bounces). While this may (and even this is a matter of some controversy)
be reasonable when the transaction is 'actively' declined because of
lack of funds/credit, I think it is unreasonable and unacceptable when
it is due to a failure in the merchant's (or their card processor's)
procedures to authorise the payment. Yet when this happens, all the
merchant can (or is willing to) the cardholder is that the payment was
declined and to contact the card issuer. Yet in every (though few) case
I have had of a payment made by mail/web/telephone being declined, the
card issuer has stated that they received no attempt at
authorising/taking the payment.