Seeing red after going Solo

Users of Solo transaction cards beware: evidence is growing of mysterious duplicate payments that can wreck careful budgeting plans by people on low incomes.

Tamsin Williams wanted to buy her 10-year-old son a Star Wars Lego kit. She couldn't find what she wanted in her local shops in Penzance. Only the Lego website had the one he wanted. So she visited the site last week and paid £31.94 using her Halifax Cashcard.

The card uses the Solo transaction system, which is a pared-down version of Switch. There are 6m Solo cards, and millions of transactions are made each year.

The Solo sign is designed for people who do not want to operate an overdraft, and is usually seen on debit cards that cannot be used as cheque cards as well.

Ms Williams' payment went through and everything seemed fine. A few days later, when she checked her balance, she was told that while she had £40 in her account, no money was available for her to spend as the system had a £31.94 payment pending - a duplicate of the Lego payment - plus another £12.50 for another on-line purchase.

"I was expecting there to be about £27 in there, which would last until a payment goes in later this week.

"But when the Lego transaction was duplicated, it took me effectively into the red on an account with no overdraft.

"What worries me, is that the £12.50 Solo payment that is pending was made online and the same thing will happen again."

And she knows the payment has been duplicated, because it has happened before.

In the summer, she found herself refused cash withdrawals after purchasing items online from Amazon.

Five days after the transactions were processed, a duplicate payment was taken from her account. Her card was refused in her local Tesco's and she was forced to pay using Visa. Then, after the five days, the money was released.

At the time, Halifax call centre staff blamed the online retailer.

The retailer blamed the bank and Solo, an offshoot of Switch, blamed the bank. Ms Williams was none the wiser.

She decided to have another go at using her Cashcard for an internet transaction last week, believing that any technical problems must have been sorted out.

"The bank says it is not my fault. But I feel as though I was forced to humiliate myself to get the bank to take it seriously," she says.

Ms Williams is a county councillor and says she fears constituents on low incomes may experience the same problems.

"Visa and Mastercard don't do this. Switch doesn't do this. But Solo does. What is going on?"

Halifax said it could take several days to discover the root of the problem.

It said technical staff were looking into the matter but during a day of investigations had failed to produce a report.

"We are concerned to hear about the trouble Ms Williams has experienced. We are making every effort to discover the cause of the problem and we will be writing to her once we have completed the investigation," a spokesman says.