Has your debit or credit card ever been declined even though you know you have money available? It can be an embarrassing experience, and if it occurred shortly after staying in a hotel or renting a car, it may have been due to card ‘blocking’.

What happens is that when you use your card in a hotel or for a rental car, a hotel or car rental company will often contact the card issuer with an estimated total of the bill. If the transaction is approved, this amount will be removed from your available balance. This is a ‘block’ or may also be called a ‘hold’.

In more detail this is what happens. Suppose you check into a £100 a night hotel for five nights. Most likely £500 would be blocked. In addition to this, an estimate for various incidentals you may use, like room service, phone calls etc. can also be blocked. The amount of this additional estimate can vary widely from merchant to merchant.

What usually then happens is that you would use this same card to pay for the hotel room, so the funds blocked will be replaced by the actual bill which should be pretty close amount. However, if you pay the bill with another card or cash, the card issuer may keep the block on your card for up to fifteen days, simply because they were never informed that the bill has been paid.

The Problems of Blocking

Blocking is basically a security measure to make sure you don’t exceed your available balance before a prior commitment has been made. If you have a large available balance, this probably won’t be a problem. But if you are approaching your limit, you should exercise care. As well as causing embarrassment, it can also mean that you can’t make an important purchase as you have no means of payment available. It can even lead to account charges for exceeding your available limit.

How to Avoid Blocking

Here are some tips to follow to avoid such problems:

• If you are checking into a hotel or renting a car, ask if they are putting a block in place, how much it is for, how this figure is arrived at and how long it will last.
• Try to pay off the bill that caused the blocking with the same card that you used initially.
• If you do use a different card or cash to pay the bill, ask the merchant to remove the block placed on the other card.