Risks of debit card use

[substitute]

Via metafilter: Careful with that debit card, they may be putting a hold on your cash money for several days.

There's a lot of hysteria about this with false reports of "$10 surcharges" etc, but retailers do put holds on credit cards regularly, and then they go ahead and do the same thing on a debit card which if you don't have a lot of money can make your bank account kind of.. SPRAINED for a few days. Word to the wise (and broke).

Comments

[brianenigma.livejournal.com]

I tend to peek at my Wells Fargo online banking statement every couple of days and had kind of suspected something like that, but this is the first I have actually heard anything official about it. POS "withdrawals" that are still pending (i.e. they were from earlier that day) never have any details other than "pending" and a dollar amount and the details usually show up the next business day. Every once in a while I have seen one show up, then mysteriously disappear the next day instead of getting details--and they do seem to coincide with things like gas fill-ups and other types of things in which a traditional credit card would do a reserve.