RCCL and pending auths from past cruise

[dodgestang]

In a really weird spot....I know it will clear itself up but it's frustrating.

Got back from my Christmas cruise.....we spent a bit of money on board having a great time.

During the course of the week RCCL 'auths' partial balances against your credit card.  Then at the end of the cruise rather than settle against those auths, the processed a new auth and settled against it.  This results in literally 8k in 'pending' charges showing on my account killing my credit lines while I wait for them to expire.  Both RCCL and Citi shrug their shoulders when I contact them about it...."they will expire in 30 days"....and I'm like "yeah, but in the meantime my wife just got embarrassed at the grocery store when she was low on cash and tried to use her credit.

[Atlantix2000]

Normally, pending charges only take a couple days to fall off.  If Citi says 30 days, they are just covering themselves.  There's also nothing Royal can do about it, they have no power to remove pending charges.  Best option is to have multiple cards and use the one with the best travel rewards for Royal and a different card for everyday expenses like groceries.  At least for me, I've never found my travel card to be the best option at the grocery store (from a rewards perspective).

[dodgestang]

Royal could have settled against the auths they already had instead of creating 3 auths (2 during the week for partial amounts and then one at the end for the full amount).  The auths are 20 days old at this point and still show pending.  Normally this stuff just goes unnoticed by all but when your septic system blows up for Thanksgiving right after you paid off the cruise and you opt to hoard the cash for the plumber....and then you find 8k sitting tied up restricting you as basically ghost charges....it gets irritating

[Atlantix2000]

Don't get me wrong, I sympathize with you.  The reason Royal (or any business) handles their charges this way is all about saving money on card processing fees.  Anytime you use a card, there are two possible fees the merchant pays: a swipe charge (fixed amount per transaction) and a processing charge (fixed percent per transaction).  Larger merchants have some ability to negotiate those fees but they still add up.  By posting daily (or even more frequent) pending charges, Royal is making sure your card can cover what you have charged.  But then, they only run one real transaction at the end so they only have one swipe charge.  In general, this saves them some money.  I would say your case is somewhat unusual in having so few charges add up to 8K so Royal probably didn't actually save very much in your case.  But their accounting system can only do what it is programmed to do.  I hope it resolves soon for you!

[Jkaczano]

22 hours ago, dodgestang said:

In a really weird spot....I know it will clear itself up but it's frustrating.

Got back from my Christmas cruise.....we spent a bit of money on board having a great time.

During the course of the week RCCL 'auths' partial balances against your credit card.  Then at the end of the cruise rather than settle against those auths, the processed a new auth and settled against it.  This results in literally 8k in 'pending' charges showing on my account killing my credit lines while I wait for them to expire.  Both RCCL and Citi shrug their shoulders when I contact them about it...."they will expire in 30 days"....and I'm like "yeah, but in the meantime my wife just got embarrassed at the grocery store when she was low on cash and tried to use her credit.

2 things I would consider - you can ask Citi to increase the available credit on the card permanently or temporarily or you can make a mid month payment on the card.  Both options would increase the available credit and no one will be embarrassed at the grocery store. 

[JCoop269]

Boy do I sympathize with this post.  We just got back from an 8-day Southern Caribbean cruise on Explorer on 10/10 and I see the same thing on my Citi AA card.  The actual charge for $1094 cleared and was part of the last statement, but I then have another $994 in pending authorizations that are just chillin.  I get the saving money aspect and of course they warn you of pending charges, but the number and amount are a bit ridiculous...and super random.  Like what makes their system pick out random amounts to authorize temporarily like that...just dumb.  I guess it's basically one authorization for each day of the cruise, but again they don't really make sense.  Some are $200+ and some are like $2 and $3.  Dumb dumb dumb.  

[MHW]

On 10/17/2022 at 9:16 AM, JCoop269 said:

Boy do I sympathize with this post.  We just got back from an 8-day Southern Caribbean cruise on Explorer on 10/10 and I see the same thing on my Citi AA card.  The actual charge for $1094 cleared and was part of the last statement, but I then have another $994 in pending authorizations that are just chillin.  I get the saving money aspect and of course they warn you of pending charges, but the number and amount are a bit ridiculous...and super random.  Like what makes their system pick out random amounts to authorize temporarily like that...just dumb.  I guess it's basically one authorization for each day of the cruise, but again they don't really make sense.  Some are $200+ and some are like $2 and $3.  Dumb dumb dumb.  

I got off Mariner October 1st and still have charges pending from my cruise as of today.  A few have fallen off but the bulk of it is still there.  It is a pain but nothing we can do other than settle in cash and I prefer to earn the airline miles, lol.