Comments on: The Debit Card Block Trap

By: snickers

snickers — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:32:53 +0000

As gasoline stations, just pay in the store instead of at the pump to avoid the hold.

By: jfc

jfc — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:24:10 +0000

Hi TVD,

If I recall correctly, they can take them up to 5 business days to remove the block. It depends a lot on state banking laws and how good the computer systems the merchant and your bank have and how well they talk to each other.

On Dave Ramsey, I think that he’s got a good plan for getting out of debt that really works from the psychological perspective. However, his plan is geared toward the credit-aholic who’s going to have trouble managing credit no matter what. For them, dumping credit entirely is the best thing to do. If you can manage credit and your money, then it’s not a terrible idea to have a credit card you keep paid off and only used for specific purchases, such as those where blocking might be an issue, and real emergencies. You have to have a lot of financial self-discipline to do this though.

By: TVD

TVD — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:59:08 +0000

Yes, this just happened to me today. Rented a car with Enterprise just yesterday, and by the time I made it from the counter down to the car & called the automated banking system, the $350 hold (which, by the way, I had been told the day before would be only $300) was gone from my account. I returned the car early today, and was told around $490 would be refunded to my account. Well, its twelve hours later, and no money back in the account.

This is the main problem I have with financial “gurus” like Dave Ramsey who say that you don’t need to have a credit card these days. Perhaps we all SHOULD have plenty of money lying around so that things like this aren’t a big deal, but most of us don’t, and $490 is a LOT of money. I wonder how long it will take to get it back.

By: Cheap GPS Systems

Cheap GPS Systems — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:10:12 +0000

I really had no idea about this practice. This is very useful information.

By: alex

alex — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:21:14 +0000

I keep getting blocked when using my debit card on ebay, and it just becomes really annoying, because I’ve already committed to buy and I have to explain to the seller that my card isn’t working and I don’t know when its gonna start workin again.

By: jfc

jfc — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:03:24 +0000

Hi Gizmo,

I got bitten by this myself when I was renting a car a while back. It was quite annoying. I hope it helps you avoid any such problems.

By: Gizmo

Gizmo — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:21:27 +0000

Wow I had no idea. Thanks for the heads up. We don’t rent cars often and we rarely get close to our ridiculous credit limit, but still this is good info to have. I may share it with my readers at some point.