What happened is that Stardock asked for an "authorization". This is to validate the credit card, to make sure the funds are in there. If the card is not charged within a set number of days--this can be from 3 business days to up to two weeks or more--then the authorization is released. A very few banks do not clear authorizations for over a month. In order to clear the authorization, you will have to talk to your bank, or talk to the credit card company. Some will clear authorizations when requested, but some will not unless the company who requested the authorization gives the all-clear.

Yep, I know they almost always do this especially if the credit card has not been used in their system before. But the charge is usually $0.01 or $1.00. Now it's $49.95 and my bank keeps that charge for 30 or 60 days, can't remember which one it was. I've contacted them about this before few years ago and they simply answered they won't remove those charges, the one who made the authorization request has to cancel it. Which is pretty much what you said.

That's why I hope this pre-charge is what they actually use to charge me when the beta starts considering I have like ten bucks left in my bank account so another charge of $49.95 is out of question for the next few weeks

What pigeonpigeon said. The whole point of the authorization is that when they use the charge, they use the funds appropriated by the authorization first. A lot of places will use the 1.00 method, because companies can FORCE the charge for over the amount as long as they get a small authorization first. It's... well, it's a very dubious business practice and I'm not sure if it's legal because it can often bump people up over their limit.

Can I pass this on to my engineering department?  Their definition of "Summer 2009" seems to be more...flexible.

Then your bank is pretty stupid.

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