Quote:
Originally Posted by donovan1983
Of course they show up as pending transactions, but the B&N site never implied they would even try to charge your card. I think it's a little shady to not be upfront about something like that, and hopefully they will either change the wording on their site, or do what Sony and others do (which is what I expected) and not attempt to charge a card at all until the end of the trial period.
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because they don't charge your card, in order for them to charge your card they would have to send in authorization codes to have the transaction go from pending to charged.
Nothing shady, its a very common practice. Nothing gets charged.
They're not trying to pull a fast one on you, it's simply how some billing departments have their system.
If I was to take an educated guess on why they just dont charge the card at the end is because they're billing system is set up in a way that has to make sure your card is in good standing in order to make transactions which includes ALL transactions. So the billing system see's the subscription as a transaction and automatically runs the card but since it's a promotion it's more than likely "Flagged" so the billing department know not to send in authorization codes to your bank. So it goes into Pending. All debit card transactions all go straight to pending. It's not officially Charged.
So instead of setting up a totally different billing scheme just for Free trial promotions, they would just have transactions that are for Trial Promotions Flagged as to not send in authorizations to your bank. That way it also easier to have debit cards under the same bililng structure as credit cards.
This is also a very similiar billing structure used in restaurants and Bars and other merchants.