Originally Posted by
Rider79
Had good experiences with them in the past, quick shipping, but I don't like their practice of charging your card immediately, especially when the in stock status of their items is questionable. However, my past few times dealing with them have been terrible, with the exception of a Pelican case I ordered from them a month or so ago. Items just haven't shipped, and I've just emailed them and cancelled. No reply, but the charge disappeared. Did that about a month ago for so Glock mags, Lancer mags, and batteries. Nothing for about a week, so I emailed and cancelled. No reply, but the charge disappeared. Get an email today, saying my items have shipped, and my card is charged again. No big deal, I can use the stuff, but seriously, WTF?
They are not actually charging your card when you first place the order. They are doing what is called a "pre-auth". They do a "pre-authorization" for the total amount of the order but they do not close it out until they ship. Ie, they do not get your money. This is the same thing that happens to you when go to one of those "swipe the card pay at the pump" gas stations. They do a "pre-authorization" against your card when you first swipe it and before you pump -- but since they don't know how much you are going to pump they will pre-auth $50 or $75 (or more depending on gas prices and average sale) but when you are done pumping they will actually close out the pre-auth to finalize the charge but at the actual sale amount. It sometimes can take a few days for the "pre-auth" to go away once they finalize the charge so you will log in to your banks online system and check and it shows you down $50 or $75 even though you pumped only $20 in gas, and then mysteriously a few days later your available credit jumps up $30 or so bucks as you get that pre-auth back.
Except in BOTACH (and others who pre-auth you) case, the pre-auth only will last for a week usually (each bank may have slightly different policies) and so if BOTACH does not ship to you within the week, you magically get that money back on your spending limit. They just never finalized the charge and it expired.
Why do they do this? They want to make sure you can pay for your purchase before they go to the hassle of packing it up I guess. But since half the crap BOTACH sells they don't have in stock the pre-auth ends up being a PITA for you since you think your stuff is coming. It doesn't, you get pissed thinking they have charged your card (which they kind of have but they don't get the money) and then a month later they actually ship and do an actual charge on your card.
I almost never do a pre-auth unless I get someone who places a special custom order I have to get in and I want to make sure the money is allocated to me before I order it in as it is expensive to return special order stuff I don't normally ship. BOTACH seems to do it automatically on every order.
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•eguns.com has not been actively promoted in a long time though I still do Dillon special
orders, etc. and I have random left over inventory.
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