What irritates me is that European hotels tend to put the hold on your CC for the entire stay, then when you check out, they run the charges through again as "new" rather than closing out the original hold. Hence you end up with 2x the your available credit chewed up - sometimes for 10 days or more, which after 2-3 weeks on the road in Europe, tends to add up quickly.

A unplanned 7200 hold, plus my pending holiday shopping charges plus windows for a house would cause me some issues as I don't have a super high limit on my primary card, by choice. Your statement is awfully judgmental.

This!

Even with high CL, when you are on the road for a multi-weeks trip, each hotel put on a hold that is $$$ a day for the whole stay (very common from European hotels especially the better names in a chain, assuming you would dine and wine at their properties0, it would add up quickly and soon you are left with very little line to use.

Cruiselines are bad offenders as well.

A very poor practice in the past was how Princess cruiseline handled the authorizations every day during the whole cruise. Instead of just doing the incremental amount each day, it put on the TOTAL amount of that day, which included previous days charges. As a result, a $300 initial hold on first day became another $380 hold on second day and another $4500 hold on third day, so on so forth, assuming you spend $80 on day 2 and another $70 on day 3, so the total should only be $450, but because of this stupid practice, your card is now having $300, $380, $450 - 3 holds adding up to $1130 in total holds versus you only charged a total of $450!

Can you imagine how a 16 days cruise could add up?! They finally changed to just hold the incrementals each day starting last year.

Holland America changed its hold policy by a fixed amount per day, higher amount on shorter cruise, and lower amount on longer cruise - I believe it is $90 a day for 7 to 10 days cruise but $60 a day for 14 to 16 days cruise and only $45 a day for cruise 17 days and up (could be as long as 3 months...) The hold is put in at check in, net of any shipboard credits you have in your account - a much better practice than Princess - though both are owned by Carnival but have very different policies.

Holds do not drop off until 7 days after no billing to offset it for most Chase cards. Holds stay on AMEX cards for 12 business days. Holds can stay on Citi cards for as long as 30 days!!! These are all based on actual experiences in lots of travels made in Europe, Asia and Australia/NZ.

What really irks me is as someone posted, the European hotels do not use the same hold to bill the charges at check out, resulting a double holds on your card - one a phoney hold at check in one a real charge to settle the bill at check out.

Asian hotels often immediately releases the hold by running the release thru their bank's POS when you check out, so the initial hold would return to your account in about 2 to 3 days after your check out.

I ran into this and my solution was to have a "hold card" that I used to checkin, and a "real card" that I used to checkout with.

Can't believe I'm being judged.

While I have a bunch of CCs, I use my Ritz card CC for major purchases and primary auto, etc due to the protection the card offers. The windows I'm looking to buy are 10K+. I also need to allow $$ for my vacation, etc..

And for the record I have 0 CC Debt as I pay my bill in full each month.

You're not by the majority on this thread. There are a number of good examples in the thread where excessive holds can cause a problem.

Like others I've run into the European situation with dual holds. It was especially problematic on a 3-week European vacation with multiple hotel stays where dual holds are existing & not falling off before the next dual ones happen, as well as an 8-day stay for a convention each year where the room rates are inflated. Add in the exchange rate & several thousand $$ are tied up. Can't speak for others but Chase definitely takes 8-10 days for int'l holds to fall off.

Since it is a few days later, did the $7,200 fall off?

Cheers.

I've deleted half a dozen posts in this thread because they are about other posters and their opinions rather than on-topic. Please stop that. The next step is to close the thread, which I would rather avoid.

Bruce
Moderator

No worries, the vast majority seemed to understand your situation without judgement.

FT is a great resource but occasionally the pass judgement post rears its head. Dont let it get to you.

I'm assuming the $7,200 has dropped off by now.

Cheers.

Before this thread slips into history I'm going into helicopter parent mode and reinforcing a couple of points I didn't comprehend first starting personal and business travel decades ago. Nothing that other people didn't point out upthread, but perhaps lost in the thread haze.

• Assume the credit line on your primary card will be tied up before long. It's not as bad as it was 30 years ago when it took a month for the holds to drop off if the hotel forgot to lift them or your own issuer didn't process the release fax, but it happens. Meaning you may need to ratchet your line up before you leave, even if they will only give you a temporary bump.
• Always have a hole card. Meaning one, or preferably two, backups. Leave one card in the safe and don't use it unless the primary card is lost of there is a problem. At least one card should not be a joint card.

Some other old people may have other geezerly hints, but these are my two.
Thanks,
"Pops" Jayer

....and have cards issued by more than one entity: don't just have AmEx cards with different affiliations, etc. such as DL and SPG.

Not to sidetrack the thread, while the above info is good it doesn't take into consideration those that might not be able to get credit cards with high limits, or get multiple credit cards or might use debit cards (the debit card discussion is best saved for Omni where there is a thread). And for those that might have more than one card it doesn't necessarily mean that all of the cards have high limits. A $7,200 hold is still a significant hold.

Getting back to the OP's initial question - is $7,200 a normal incidental hold? I don't think so.

Cheers.

Pending Charge of Ritz of $7200.. normal?
 

Did they finally say it was indeed an extra zero?

Careful with that "hole card". Some issuers will close it after six months of non-use without notifying you.