paying off a cc hold in advance

Only way is to make a payment hand have a credit balance. If that works it should sold the problem. Other way is to get a credit increase. That should be fairly simple.

Never ran into the problem as my lowest limit card is $10,000

Somone online who only has 1600 pounds credit and wants to rent a car.

In ye olde daize I had (for the sake of discussion here), a $1,000 credit limit. (This is back when that was a lot of money).

I anticipated buying some large purchases totalling $1,500.

So I prepaid an extra $1,000 into my account, thinking this would let me charge up to $2,000.

Bzzzzzt. The company would still only approve $1,000.

NOTE: this was Way Bck. Current procedures may be different.

Check with your company first, etc., etc.

Very interesting. You mailed them a check, or used their webpage?

I had an $8000 bill coming up that I wanted to charge for the sake of the points, but no card that went up to 8000. I called each of my 3 cc companies and asked if I could do what you tried and they all said no.

I tried anyhow, thinking a programming error might let me do it. One wouldn't let me pay any more than my balance, which was zero. Another did let me pay, but I guess called it pending, to match a charge from that day that was also in the "pending" category. A couple days later, I got two emails very close togehter, one about the charge they had charged me and one acknowledging the payment. As nice as that is, it wouldn't help the guy I was trying to help. The third was slightly different from the other two but I forget how.

Clare said:

This guy is in the UK, so that is encouraging. I suggested he ask his cc company if he could do that.

I wonder why US banks won't allow it. I can't see how it hurts anyone or anything. Indeed, it helps the cc company by allowing one to make more or bigger charges, on which they take a commission.

And their name is... micky.

I just use my banks "bill pay" system to make advance payments to my credit card.  Never had an advance payment declined.

Most Visa/MasterCard banks make pre-pay difficult because they want you to be 1 nanosecond late so they can ding you with a $49 late fee.

Definitely NOT my experience.

I don't know about pre-pay but automatic payment is easy to set up. My CostCo Citi card is still on the traditional paper billing. It comes at the end of the month and jogs my memory for anything else I might have to pay at that time.