VALVE?! WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥

[Man Of Steal]

I've just bundled four of my wishlist items on steam and bought them in one go, and it says that my transaction failed the first time so I tried again and it said success but in my library there wasn't a single game to be found, so I checked my bank and low and behold I've just been charged 60 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ quid and I don't have the stuff, it says in my purchase history that the purchases have failed/have hyphens going through the letters, help please. Edit: It says on steam support that I shouldn't have been charged and my bank says that it can't refund it and I have to speak to the merchant WHICH IS STEAM I AM NOT IMPRESSED. Edit: apparently it isn't my purchase history isn't showing that I failed purchase but in fact it is showing that I failed purchase buried under 4 hyperlinks in steam support! WHY ISNT THERE A CONTACT NUMBER??

[Seretti]

I would guess the first one, which failed, is on temporary hold by your bank. It will be released in a few days.

How does no one knows these things? Jesus...

[rawWwRrr]

Seretti님이 먼저 게시:

How does no one knows these things? Jesus...

children with their first credit card

[Seretti]

rawWwRrr님이 먼저 게시:

children with their first credit card

One would think the parents would teach them how things work but I guess that's not the thing to do anymore.

[Man Of Steal]

Seretti님이 먼저 게시:

rawWwRrr님이 먼저 게시:

children with their first credit card

One would think the parents would teach them how things work but I guess that's not the thing to do anymore.

Hey you guys don't have to be ♥♥♥♥♥ I was just surprised that there wasn't an actual contact forum, also I haven't had my money back and nothing explaining this from valve itself, you're not helping anyone by making fun of them

[Seretti]

VoidScape님이 먼저 게시:

Seretti님이 먼저 게시:

One would think the parents would teach them how things work but I guess that's not the thing to do anymore.

Hey you guys don't have to be ♥♥♥♥♥ I was just surprised that there wasn't an actual contact forum, also I haven't had my money back and nothing explaining this from valve itself, you're not helping anyone by making fun of them

I thought you just bought the games. When did you make the failed purchase? How many work days ago? If it's been like 7 days or so, you should go ask your bank.

[Teksura]

Ahh, another of these. All right, let's talk about how banks work and why there is literally no reason for Steam Support to even be involved here (thus why you can't open a ticket about the issue they have no power to help with). Honestly, they should teach this in school



For anyone who wants to actually know how banks transfer money, here are some good explanations that will help you understand why it takes a week or 2 to get your refund:


https://gendal.me/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/
https://www.currencycloud.com/en-us/news/blog/how-money-moves/
https://www.quora.com/How-does-money-transfer-between-banks-and-different-countries-work



To put it as simple as possible for those unwilling to click the link and read pages and pages of this:

When you deposit money in your bank, that bank owes you money. When you transfer money to a different bank (such as through a purchase), that other bank doesn't want to owe that amount of money to whoever you pay unless they are owed the same amount as well. This works well when the 2 banks hold accounts with each other, because they can modify the balance in those accounts to cover it. But sometimes they have to go through a third, fourth, or fifth bank just to connect the two of them if they don't have accounts with each other.



Is it possible to send an instant transfer? Yes, but that system has a fee attached to it (because someone owns that system) and it's usually better to wait until a certain time when you have a whole bunch of transactions so you can just worry about the net difference between them between the 2 banks. This allows hundreds or even thousands of transactions to become 1.

And that's why it can take "up to 7 days" for the funds to actually get to where they are going. It is simply easier and more economical to deal with small transactions en masse. If we were to imagine a human being saying it it might go something like this: "Over the last week, we owe you $X and you owe us $Y so to cover this we will credit the difference of $Z to your account with us and then you will owe all this money to these accounts, and we'll owe all this money to the ones on that list you're giving us."

So, what does that have to do with you? When you attempted the transaction, your bank received the request for the funds. The money did not actually leave your account, but online banking is designed to make it look like it did so you don't go spending money you already spent. So, the funds are on hold and waiting for everything to process and actually go through. Except something went wrong. Where did it go wrong? Why did it go wrong? I can't say for specific, but this can have happened at any point along the process with any number of banks systems having an issue. So, the funds remain on hold until your bank goes to process those transactions and can see that the merchant is no longer requesting the funds. At that point, they release the funds.

Fun fact: When I go to fill up at my local gas station, they put a "kind of almost hold" of around $150 on my card. It takes about a day or so before the transaction is finalized and I am charged the correct amount. Most cards hide this hold from gas stations so you never realize how much they actually held because people would be understandably angry if their card was dinged for that much every time they topped off their tank, this uses a different system that is more like I have authorized them to charge up to that amount and agree to be held liable if I don't have the funds when they do charge it, but they don't actually charge it until later. A lot of this sort of thing happens without you knowing about it because banks design their online banking systems to hide a lot of that stuff just so they don't have to answer endless questions about how banks work.


Most banks, you can just call them up when a transaction has been canceled and you can get them to release the hold early by just asking nicely without cussing out the representative the way you've been doing so far. If yours doesn't do this, either you ticked off the representative, or your bank simply doesn't offer that service to their customers.

[Tazor]

Seretti님이 먼저 게시:

rawWwRrr님이 먼저 게시:

children with their first credit card

One would think the parents would teach them how things work but I guess that's not the thing to do anymore.

Yeah, true. Daddy's been gone since I was 7 or 8. Mom was always busy and tired. I was basically raised by the internet and some teachers I hated.

[Man Of Steal]

Teksura님이 먼저 게시:

Ahh, another of these. All right, let's talk about how banks work and why there is literally no reason for Steam Support to even be involved here (thus why you can't open a ticket about the issue they have no power to help with). Honestly, they should teach this in school



For anyone who wants to actually know how banks transfer money, here are some good explanations that will help you understand why it takes a week or 2 to get your refund:


https://gendal.me/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/
https://www.currencycloud.com/en-us/news/blog/how-money-moves/
https://www.quora.com/How-does-money-transfer-between-banks-and-different-countries-work



To put it as simple as possible for those unwilling to click the link and read pages and pages of this:

When you deposit money in your bank, that bank owes you money. When you transfer money to a different bank (such as through a purchase), that other bank doesn't want to owe that amount of money to whoever you pay unless they are owed the same amount as well. This works well when the 2 banks hold accounts with each other, because they can modify the balance in those accounts to cover it. But sometimes they have to go through a third, fourth, or fifth bank just to connect the two of them if they don't have accounts with each other.



Is it possible to send an instant transfer? Yes, but that system has a fee attached to it (because someone owns that system) and it's usually better to wait until a certain time when you have a whole bunch of transactions so you can just worry about the net difference between them between the 2 banks. This allows hundreds or even thousands of transactions to become 1.

And that's why it can take "up to 7 days" for the funds to actually get to where they are going. It is simply easier and more economical to deal with small transactions en masse. If we were to imagine a human being saying it it might go something like this: "Over the last week, we owe you $X and you owe us $Y so to cover this we will credit the difference of $Z to your account with us and then you will owe all this money to these accounts, and we'll owe all this money to the ones on that list you're giving us."

So, what does that have to do with you? When you attempted the transaction, your bank received the request for the funds. The money did not actually leave your account, but online banking is designed to make it look like it did so you don't go spending money you already spent. So, the funds are on hold and waiting for everything to process and actually go through. Except something went wrong. Where did it go wrong? Why did it go wrong? I can't say for specific, but this can have happened at any point along the process with any number of banks systems having an issue. So, the funds remain on hold until your bank goes to process those transactions and can see that the merchant is no longer requesting the funds. At that point, they release the funds.

Fun fact: When I go to fill up at my local gas station, they put a "kind of almost hold" of around $150 on my card. It takes about a day or so before the transaction is finalized and I am charged the correct amount. Most cards hide this hold from gas stations so you never realize how much they actually held because people would be understandably angry if their card was dinged for that much every time they topped off their tank, this uses a different system that is more like I have authorized them to charge up to that amount and agree to be held liable if I don't have the funds when they do charge it, but they don't actually charge it until later. A lot of this sort of thing happens without you knowing about it because banks design their online banking systems to hide a lot of that stuff just so they don't have to answer endless questions about how banks work.


Most banks, you can just call them up when a transaction has been canceled and you can get them to release the hold early by just asking nicely without cussing out the representative the way you've been doing so far. If yours doesn't do this, either you ticked off the representative, or your bank simply doesn't offer that service to their customers.

Yeah I get that but when you make a purchase on steam underneath the purchase it states that I have immediate access to the content eventhough I don't and yes I do understand how the transaction is pending, I'm just wondering how long this will take as again it states immediate access...?

[Teksura]

You said that all you have in your purchase history is a failed purchase and 4 hyperlinks. What pages do those links go to? What text do they say?

[crunchyfrog]

VoidScape님이 먼저 게시:

Seretti님이 먼저 게시:

One would think the parents would teach them how things work but I guess that's not the thing to do anymore.

Hey you guys don't have to be ♥♥♥♥♥ I was just surprised that there wasn't an actual contact forum, also I haven't had my money back and nothing explaining this from valve itself, you're not helping anyone by making fun of them

Here's how it works here.

First off there's two prongs to support. First off, if you have any issues with games or anything you ask us here - other users. If there's something personal with accounts that we can't answer, then you make a support ticket.

Now, considering this issue, ALL online payments work like this.

When you make a payment, there's a really short window of operation between the vendor and the bank in question. It's deliberately this way for security reasons. The downaisde is that sometimes (especially during congestions or sales) things can time out. This means that you get a situation like you've experienced. The payment APPEARS to have already been taken.

What has actually happened is that it timed out, and the money has been "set aside" in your account (it hasn't actually gone anywhere yet). There are backup systems usually overnight that can fix this, so it sits there waiting to see if it happens. If it does all is fixed and you get the games and everything's good.

However, if it still fails, then the money remains set aside for a few days (usualyl three working days for a proper bank, and longer if it's a third party payment provider or prepaid debit card). After which, the money simply gets freed up again for use.

If you use a decent bank-backed debit card, you can sometimes ring them up and ask them to check and they can see there's been an error and fix it, but if they are either not a proper bank or aren't well trained they won't.

So at that stage all you can do is wait until the funds get returned.

[Man Of Steal]

Teksura님이 먼저 게시:

You said that all you have in your purchase history is a failed purchase and 4 hyperlinks. What pages do those links go to? What text do they say?

Well I sorta exaggerated it a bit but basically instead of going payment history you go to steam support and go into payments and select which payment you've had trouble with and they all have hyphens going through them

[Muppet among Puppets]

VoidScape님이 먼저 게시:

Edit: It says on steam support that I shouldn't have been charged and my bank says that it can't refund it and I have to speak to the merchant

I recommend that you talk with merchants, instead of being too quick with involving payment processors about making them return the money.

This will help keeping your payment method a good one, and it will cost you nothing.

[Teksura]

VoidScape님이 먼저 게시:

Teksura님이 먼저 게시:

You said that all you have in your purchase history is a failed purchase and 4 hyperlinks. What pages do those links go to? What text do they say?

Well I sorta exaggerated it a bit but basically instead of going payment history you go to steam support and go into payments and select which payment you've had trouble with and they all have hyphens going through them

Well then, what does your purchase history say?

[Man Of Steal]

Teksura님이 먼저 게시:

VoidScape님이 먼저 게시:

Well I sorta exaggerated it a bit but basically instead of going payment history you go to steam support and go into payments and select which payment you've had trouble with and they all have hyphens going through them

Well then, what does your purchase history say?

Nothing, only purchases before I made these ones it just doesn't show up

[crunchyfrog]

VoidScape님이 먼저 게시:

Teksura님이 먼저 게시:

Well then, what does your purchase history say?

Nothing, only purchases before I made these ones it just doesn't show up

Which means it did not go through properly.

So you have a couple of choices.

Either if you have a good bank backed debit card, you can try to ring them and see if they can see the error and clear it, meaning you get the funds released quickly, or you wait a few days.

There's no other way.