Why was 1$ taken from my credit card over nothing?

[Randya]

Okay, It may be a me thing, but I don't get it. I needed to make a purchase online for 25.00. So, I bought a pre-paid credit card for the amount of 25.00 to make the purchase and set it up through paypal as the merchant does payment through them. I went to make the transaction through the retailer and it wouldn't go through. So to be thorough, I went to the site for my prepaid card and checked the balance. It says 24.00, and the 1.00 went to paypal? Why exactly is that? I didn't see anything anywhere that mentioned that paypal would be taking 1.00 off of my credit card balance simply for entering the numbers into my account.... What's even more ironic, I've made this exact same purchase before successfully, and for the same 25.00 with the same type of card. Paypal didn't take the 1.00 off of my card then and the transaction was fine. So, now I'm stuck with a prepaid card that I could care less about other than to make this one purchase of 25.00, but I can't because I got greased by the cheese wiz! Where in the flip is my dollar, and why was I not notified that they were taking that dollar in the first place. Why did they never before, and why all of a sudden now. This is the whole reason I don't have a "regular" credit card in the first place. Shady practice

[sandypurins]

The $1.00 charge is likely a temporary pre-authorization charge which will drop off after a few days.  A rather extensive explanation is available at the following link...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_hold

-Sandy

[Randya]

Right, understanding the concept of the "hold" is not so much the issue @Sandy as I'm sure we are both aware that it's pretty simple in nature. Thanks for the link of course....

What isn't really understandable is when a reputable company decides to take a fee from you without a prior notification of any sort. I've never read any policy that stated they would do as such, nor was I notified at the time of trying to make the transaction that I would incur this temporary charge. To make things even more unacceptable, I've made this exact same purchase now on multiple occasions, each time with a pre-paid credit card, and never had this happen before. When I'm trying to make a purchase for 25.00 and I have a 25.00 card, taking the dollar out makes me not be able to go through with the transaction, nor can I do so by other means because the dollar is now gone. The least they could do is give you a notification that the dollar is being taken out so you have the option to opt out of it. Not a happy customer.

Thank you for your help Sandy.