Travel math

France is one of the most popular countries for travel and business trips. For a journey to the most romantic country, you cannot avoid booking airplane tickets, making hotel reservation and renting a car.

What kind of situations connected with bank transactions can occur? First of all, the same amount maybe blocked twice on your card account when you pay for your reservations. We will explain it through case stories.

Example: the balance of your card account was 1000 EUR before the trip. You ordered return airplane tickets for 200 EUR, made a hotel reservation for 400 EUR and rented a car for 100 EUR. As you know, when you pay by card, the amounts would be blocked; therefore the amount available shall be 300 EUR.

However, the cost of car rent increased to 165 EUR at the last minute, and the company released previously blocked 100 EUR and charged 165 EUR. So the balance of account will be 235 EUR (300+100-165). Everything is all right so far, bur suddenly you decide to use additional hotel services for another 150 EUR. Due to a technical error, the hotel failed to release pre-blocked 400 EUR, but debited your account for 500 EUR for the services actually rendered (400 EUR for the reservation +150 EUR for the additional hotel services). As a consequence, the balance of account will be negative: -315 EUR. Negative amounts may occur both in credit and debit payment cards and represent unauthorized overdraft.

How can one get the money back? First of all, you should ask the employees of the hotel to release the amount of 400 EUR since the company has already charged 550 EUR for the services rendered. If you cannot turn to the hotel or if your appeals have been unsuccessful, you can contact the customer support service of our bank. In both cases, after the release of 400 EUR the balance will be aligned to 85 EUR.

Now that you understand the internal mechanism of payment by debit/credit card, you can enjoy your travels without unnecessary worries!