Hi @barb00sa / Robin,

I just found this article on the help page, which may help you.

As a standard, pre-authorizations will only be released 7 days after the authorization was performed. The departure of the guests is not a trigger, hence why the amounts aren’t released after the departure.

After the authorization is released, it usually takes up to 10 business days before the bank of the guest will release the money again. If the guest has any questions, why it takes so long, they will have to contact their own bank. It can even take longer if the guests used a debit card (which is extremely common in Europe) instead of a credit card.

Regards,

Matthias

Hi @barb00sa Sorry to hear this. I can understand how this can reflect poorly on you. As you say, the pre-authorisation is cancelled next day, this is the part that you/Mews has control over. However, the release of the funds back to the guests bank account is purely up to the individual bank. For clarity, this is explained here in this article.
It may be wise to make note of the banks that are causing this delay and pre-warning your guests. And as an extra measure, you could request the ARN (Acquirer Reference Number) from our support team and provide it to the guest on check-out so they can follow up directly.

@MatthiasH As a front office manager also in Belgium, do you suffer the same issue?

Thanks for the input @MatthiasH   We must have been typing at the same time! 

Hi @Sarah.Masterton-Brown ,

We’ve had some complaints in the past, but they are very rare.

In 99% of the cases there are no issues as we clearly inform the guests that it can take up to 10 business days for the banks to release the money again.

As for the ARN, it may be interesting to include is in the payments tab of the guest, so we can direclty communicate this to the guest. Currently it takes roughly 48h before some tickets are picked-up which is resulting in unhappy customers...

I would like to thank everyone for their response on this. However, we have no problems with the pre-authorizations and their processing. I find it really unacceptable that when a hotel releases a pre-authorization, the bank card processors do not immediately release it to the client. Suppose someone has a pre-authorization of 1500 € for a large reservation and at check-out it is immediately released by the hotel. Then the customer may have to wait up to 28 days to get the money back. A pre-authorization should be processed as quickly as a payment. When the hotel releases it, it should be available on the customer's card within minutes. Tracking or blocking these pre-authorizations should be prohibited by law. The bank or the processor of these authorizations has no right to block these per-authorizations on the customer's card. I really don't see why they should have to keep track of it. Might be a good idea to mention this on the site of the economic inspection here in Belgium.