[Ayres Clothing]

I placed an order last week with American Apparel for a bunch of shirts which came to $803.04. I went to place an order the following day to buy some screen printing supplies with a different company and my card was declined. I checked my bank account balance online to see what was going on because I knew I had plenty of money in the account......turns out that American Apparel put a hold on my account for $815.00 which was on top of the $803.04, so basically they took $1618.04 from my account and plan to put back $815.00 after 3 days. American Apparel said its standard procedure to do a hold like that to make sure the funds are good.....but me being a small business and not having an additional $815.00 available.....I am not able to buy anything else for the next couple of days which messed up a bunch of other orders I had to print.

Is this normal for a wholesaler to put a hold on my funds like that? It doesn't make sense because they put the hold on the same account......so if the first $803.04 isn't good.....what makes the next $815.00 good?

Should I call American Apparel and ask for money off the order because of the hundreds of dollars they cost me in set backs, or is this pretty standard?


Thanks

 

[Vtec44]

I've never heard of such business practice, but then again I've never dealth with AA directly before.

 

[jdr8271]

That is not normal business practice. Never heard of that before. Why wouuld they care if you have extra money in your account? Makes no sence.

 

[Ayres Clothing]

Yea, thats what I said....it doesn't make sense to put a hold on an additional $815.00 especially on the same account....because I wouldn't be good for the second amount if I wasn't good for the first. I have dealt with several wholesalers and never have heard of such a thing. It makes me so angry because I didn't authorize them to do that. Thanks for the replies.

 

[monkeylantern]

Very odd. Maybe they're just trying to cover their tracks after accidentally double charging?

 

[aokusman]

I deal with AA never had that issue before. Strange and a bad thing to do.

 

[Ayres Clothing]

Yea, I think they double charged me and then tried to cover it up. When I first talked to customer service.....they couldn't find anything on the second amount....they had to call me back when they figured out what had happened....they didn't believe I had been double charged. I emailed them a copy of my bank statement. And why would they charge 2 different amounts?

 

[Twinge]

It makes me so angry because I didn't authorize them to do that. Thanks for the replies.

You might want to double-check any terms of service you agreed to to make sure you didn't technically authorize such. Assuming there is no such obscure clause, I would definitely push for a discount or other form of compensation; that's ridiculous. Don't be an *** about it, but talk to them (phone might be best) and don't be afraid to ask for a manager.

 

[Solmu]

Doesn't even sound legal to me. I'd consider taking it up with the bank as well to find out what your (and their) rights are.

 

[Rodney]

It sounds like a mistake. While it is standard practice to "authorize" a sale amount (an authorization verifies and holds funds for the purchase), it's not standard practice to run two authorizations.

It's something that you should definitely take up with AmericanApparel directly. I'm sure you'll get it worked out.

 

[T-BOT]

Sometimes Credit Card transactions end of day balancing are out of wack because of POS system tech errors. It happens to every merchant now and then. Not their fault really.