Hi Ivan,

Your e-mail caused me a brief bit of panic. You see, I _didn't_ get
your order. I pictured you and others sending $40 or $45 into the void,
never to be seen again.

So I removed the link for credit card ordering and inserted a short
explanation that I was worried about all this, and then contacted the
credit card processing folks.

Apparently, when address verification leads to a failure, the money
in question is still held temporarily, then returned by the bank. I
asked when that might occur; the credit card processing rep said it varies
from bank to bank, and that you might want to give the bank a call if they
don't return the $45 soon.

Others who ran into troubles with AVS should perhaps also check to see
if their banks performed similar outrages.

<rant ON>
I am somewhere between annoyed and outraged at this behavior. (It apparently
is nothing specific to what Authorize.net does; it's something the banks do
on AVS-failed transactions in general.) It seems logical to me that if a
transaction fails, it should _fail_; it shouldn't give the bank a chance
to hang on to your money for no good reason. $%*!#@ banks...
</rant OFF>

Anyway... thanks for letting me know about this, and my apologies for
this mess.

-- Bill

Ivan Semmler wrote:

>
>
> Hello Bill
> Although my credit card purchase appeared to fail, I see that my card account has been debited with the appropriate amount.
> I assume that the DVD will shortly be on its way.
> Ivan
> Perth
> Western Australia