What should I do if I've been charged but haven't received my Eurostar tickets?

You may have recently checked your bank statement or PayPal account and discovered that there is a (pending) charge for a failed payment and/or that you have not received your ticket. Don't worry; here is some information to assist you. 

If you did not receive a confirmation email after making a booking, it may have gone into your spam/junk mail folder, so it’s always worth checking there. 

If your booking was unsuccessful but the transaction attempt appears on your statement, here are some possible explanations: 

Payment with Credit card: 

In technical terms, we use an authorization plus capture method: 

1. We receive your payment information, such as your credit card details. 
2. If your bank is enrolled, you must then complete the 3D Secure verification process (e.g. enter a code sent by SMS) 
3. Once the 3D Secure verification is complete, your bank will notify us if you have sufficient funds. If so, your bank will approve the transaction. This means they tell us there is enough money on the card and give us permission to debit your account. They have also reserved the amount for us at this point, in case we choose to debit it from your account. 
4. Now that we have been granted permission to charge, we can collect the funds. If we do capture it, your card will be charged. If, on the other hand, your payment was cancelled or failed due to an error, it means we did not complete the capture. The money is released if no charge (capture) is made. 

Payments can fail between steps three and four, causing a major misunderstanding. Do not be concerned if the transaction appears on your bank statement. Some banks include the authorization on the bank statement (usually in the 'future operations' section or similar). Depending on the bank, the 'transaction' usually disappears from the statement after a few hours or a few days. 

Payment with PayPal: 

When you make a payment with RailClick, your PayPal payment is always pending until your order is processed and then the payment is collected. If your reservation fails, your order will not be processed, and we will not collect payment. 

From our end, the payment will be automatically cancelled. As a result, once the cancellation is processed, this will be reflected in your PayPal account. 

Why does the charge still remain on my account? 

Because it is a pending payment, the charge remains on your bank statement or PayPal account. Often, it will be listed under pending payments in your account. Following the steps outlined above, we can see it makes sense that the payment is marked as pending. Your bank or PayPal has already been "notified" that we wish to make the charge and has allocated funds for us. However, due to the payment failing or being cancelled, we did not complete the capture and did not charge. 

What happens now is that your bank must process this and then release the funds on your card. The payment will eventually be marked as cancelled as well. Thus, the best thing to do is wait; it usually only takes a few hours and you'll notice that the charge hasn't been made. In the meantime, you can always contact your bank for additional confirmation.