Require banks to return access to funds within one business day of credit or debit card authorization releases

Currently hotels and rental car companies can authorize, upon check-in, up to hundreds of dollars in excess of the actual reservation, often without notifying the customer. A family may discover that their credit card is not honored upon check-in because they do not have credit covering the hundreds of dollars of “anticipated” or “estimated” charges. The injustice is compounded when/if the hotel cancels the authorization upon checkout, the bank can hold up the money for up to a month. These “policies” vary from bank to bank and may or may not be buried in the many pages of fine print in the ever-changing term agreements. The proposal is to require banks to clearly state their policies in writing, and to refund all credit within one business day of the authorization's discharge.