technonweb.com warning

saturday, while shopping for a monitor, i used pricewatch, and techonweb.com had the lowest price listed. i decided to buy from them, and went through the normal process. after submitting the final data, it came back as shipping address unverified. i thought this was truly odd, and decided to buy from another site, where my purchase appeared to process.

well, this morning i got an email from the second company, stating that they couldnt verify my shipping address. i found this quite perturbing and called my bank. after 30 min on hold, and 2 customer service reps, i found out that techonweb.com had placed a general hold on my account. now, for those of you that are uneducated (like me) in banking, it means NO transactions can occur while the hold is in place. i cant use my card, i cant write checks. i probably couldnt use the atm.

fortunately, the hold is only good for 24 hours. but i was planning on doing some shopping today. that could have been a major disaster. now, i have no objection to a merchant putting a hold in the amount of the transaction. but essentially freezing an entire account because a transaction failed is beyond the pale. and in conversation with my ever popular customer service representative, i found out that neither the bank, nor even techonweb can remove the hold, it must expire naturally.

so basically, i now have to change my plans. fortunately this isnt a big deal for me, but it would be for many other people.

so, while techonweb.com may indeed be a very good company to do business with, i believe i should warn everyone here that a computer glitch in a transaction with this company could result in a frozen account, probably at a very inconvenient time.

You have to be careful sometimes finding sites through Pricewatch. If you find a really good price from a site on there I suggest going to

www.resellerratings.com

You can look up almost every vendor on pricewatch there and read reviews of them from other buyers. I have found it quite useful many times when ordering parts.

yes, im careful when it comes to pricewatch vendors. i generally only pick companies ive heard of, and avoid the ultra cheap ones. this one slipped through. and as i said, they may be a good company otherwise. but ill never do business with them after this debacle.

well tecil, ive checked them out thru the link you gave, and they had good marks. but after reading the comments by various people, it looks like they have a very glitchy ordering system. had someone else that tried to order, and was rejected. they then shipped him the order anyway, which caused no end of problems.

a bug-ridden ordering system doesnt make me confident in them as a company.

Red ......

For curosity sake did they, (technonweb.com), say "why" they placed a "general hold" on your account and not a hold just for the price of the item, (monitor), you were ordering? That sounds really strange to me? *shrug*

And did your bank say this was a normal procedure?

ellen, my bank was as puzzled as i am. i did write to them (techonweb), assuming that its a bug in thier system, and not a deliberate act of general nastiness. as i think i said before, a hold for the amount of the purchase i would expect, but not a general hold. as it expires tonight, and they cant remove it, i saw no point in calling them and venting. i did email them telling them of the error, however. and i was even polite. took some effort, but i did it

sorry .... I re-read your post after I posted and you did say that you didn't mind them putting a hold "for the amount of purchase" ..... I hope you will let us know how this turns out .... because something smells bad ....and it will be interesting to hear the final outcome!

btw .... if you need to go shopping I am sure that Laggy will let you have the use of his credit card .... in the mean time!

Good Luck

The sad thing is that they are allowed to do this..... What sort of transaction... E Check..debit...CC?

there was a peice on the local news here... companies are allowed to do this so that they can protect themselves from those who like to write bad checks, over draw and such.

There is not a cap of what they are allowed to freeze either, I've noticed that the local wal mart/target/general mall stores, freeze roughly 150% of the purchase amount, and then the hold is released whenever the transaction is finalized.... it seems very crinminal to me that they can do this.

I think its sort of fishy that they froze all of your accounts... here in Ill they freeze only monetary amounts in the account you paid with..and not the whole account itself.

well, according to the bs email they sent me, it was supposed to authorize $1 prior to verification of all the shipping and billing data. "we apologize for any inconvenience" it was the most insincere apology ive ever seen. and it was a damn sight more than inconvenient. what if i were traveling, and tried to pay a bill? im lucky i could stay home and seethe.

back to subject at hand, the bank said no dollar amount was sent, just a general hold. ( oh, debit card btw, and only one account) guess which of them i believe? as the bank dude promised, the hold dropped off, so im relieved. ive had failed transactions before, we all have, and nothing this borked has resulted.
lets just say, while i wouldnt turn down a free monitor if they sent one, in no other way will i be doing business with them.

Have you moved recently? Or were you going to try and have the monitor delivered to a different address than your credit card billing address?

Because if a site takes your CC number, and compares the CC info with what you give it, if the addresses don't match up, they are allowed to put a hold on the card in case it's stolen.

You can set up alternate addresses on your credit card with your bank, which should avoid these kind of problems.

nova, i have lived at the same address for 6 years, and that is the address on record at the bank. so its rather hard to avoid that problem, eh? i could have set up addresses up the wazoo with the bank, and it wouldnt have made a difference.

besides, the merchandiser denies putting a general hold on the card. so they are either in the habit of lying to potential customers, or they have a very bug-ridden ordering system. neither of which i care to deal with.