Big problem on SCAN? Placed a credit-card order but wasn't asked security question!

[Bob Crabtree]

I post this not because I'm especially worried about the order being delayed, nothing on it is vital but just in case SCAN's ordering system has developed a cold.

The story so far,

Shortly after SCAN shut up shop for the day, I placed an order - (removed: david) - for four items, totalling about £150.

I chose to pay by credit card - my usual credit card - but, somehow, after my card details were typed in, the ordering processes seemingly skipped the external card-authentication stage (with my credit card supplier) and jumped straight to the finished stage.

Not surprisingly, the last of three emails I've received from SCAN about this order shows that something has gone awry. It says,

Thank you for your order. Unfortunately there has been a problem in
authorising your credit card and your payment has been declined.

Your order cannot be shipped until payment is received in full. We will
continue to attempt payment authorisation up to one week of the invoice
date. Should the transaction still be declined after this time the order
will be automatically cancelled and we will send notification of this by
email.

You do not need to contact us at this stage. However, we advise that you
contact us directly if you wish to amend your payment details or cancel
your order. Please do not submit a duplicate order unless you have
confirmation that this order has been cancelled.

If you do wish to contact us please ring 0871 472 4747 and select
Customer Services, followed by Payments.

I don't think there is any way in which I could have mistakenly jumped over the external authorisation stage (is there?).

Whatever the case, might be worth someone from SCAN checking this out - the system, I mean, not my order - if they stumble upon it before the weekend is over.

Cheers

Bob Crabtree

[Shiva]

I think your best bet will be to call them up in the morning and talk to them about it. If it failed this time it will most likely fail for the week of attempts given that you didn't do the authentication bit.

As for the system itself, if there is no connection to the card issuer it might fail there and not display a screen. However it still wont process your order. I guess they could improve it by halting the ordering process since it wasn't authenticated.

[Chris P]

Bob Crabtree

As confirmed your Payment has not been authorised ( Invalid payment details ). Please contact the Payments dept on ( 0871 472 4747 ) to re-confirm your payment details and complete the authentication process.

Best Regards

[DavidM]

Bob - please see your PM.

[Bob Crabtree]

Just for the record - user error, it would seem!

D'oh!

The PM says,

The reason you didn't get the validation stage, and the payment was declined, is that the wrong card type had been selected.

We've amended the card type and re-authorised the payment successfully.

regards

David

What can I say, apart from, "Sorry! And thanks David and SCAN"?

Oh, and David, you have PM, of course.

Cheers

Bob