Cancelled orders still showing as Pending payments?

[Fred_M]

Hi,

On May 22nd, I tried to make a purchase on homedepot.ca and checked out using paypal - at time of payment, after I entered my paypal info, the order failed with an error and  and I pressed the "Cancel order" button from the homedepot website.

I tried this 3 times before realizing that charges were actually appearing on my paypal account - as Pending. The charges are still showing as of today with the same status and have an expiration date of August 2012?

I contacted the homedepot.ca customer service right away, which confirmed they didn't have a single order for me on file - in fact, I never received any order confirmation email BUT I did get 3 emails from Paypal, one for every try, which stated I had sent a payment to homedepot. The homedepot customer service guy also told me that the pending payments in paypal were pre-authorization made during the order... NEVER EHARD OF THAT BEFORE? Are merchant really doing pre-auth transactions, the same way as when you buy from a credit card in store???? And if so, would those transaction really show up as pending on my paypal account?

He told me the pending payment should disapear from my paypal account within a matter of hours, it's been 2 days now... 

What the heck is happening? I never had issue before with Paypal.

I'm extremly confused and frustrated - I have no idea what is going on with my paypal account.

Any help Paypal guys?

[PayPal_Adrian · Accepted solution]

Fred_M -

Hello there!

Yes, some merchants do use a very similar within PayPal (called an "Order" - they'll have the letter O and then a dash as  part of their transacation ID at the beginning).  These work very much like the same process you're describing with cards.  The merchant collects on the order only once they intend on fulfilling it. 

Usually these do disappear within a few days once the merchants voids out the Order, but if they don't take action, they'll automatically cancel out after 30 days.  If you'd like to see them be voided out earlier, and you've already contacted the merchant, you'll want to reach out to customer service to have the options reviewed.

As for the error you're receiving, this could be a number of causes.  Without the error message, the two most common causes of orders failing are settings on the merchants account or a funding source that didn't support the payment.  If you reach out to customer service, they may be able to see more at that time.

Thanks!

Adrian

[Fred_M]

Thanks so much Adrian, good info to know.

I'll keep an eye on the transaction and will wait for them to automaitcally expire.

 Regarding the error, now that you mention this: "or a funding source that didn't support the payment." it could very well be the cause as I've been informed that Homedepot.ca only supports online orders with credit cards - I didn't think this applied to paypal payments as well but may very well do... and my paypal account is set to use direct transfer as primary payment source...

Cheers,

F.

[luckylittle]

a similar thing happened to me

i got an error message during an order - i don't think i hit 'cancel' - though - i think paypal just logged me out or sent me back to the store website or something

i tried to replace the order and it worked the second time - but the first payment is still listed as pending

i contacted the company and they have only recieved one order from me - the second one - but they offered no suggestions or knowledge about the first charge

should i just wait a few days and see if it disappears or is there something else i can to to reslove this sooner ??? --- it is a lot of money for me and it's making me anxious seeing it as being spent (or at least pending...)

please help !!! thanks