Know this before buying anything from Origin

I can not second this. I have bought 3 different games on Origin, and never did they charge me any "authorisation charge".

Maybe it's specific to your country?

It's standard to check card with 1$/1€ hold. It actually never leaves you card and Steam and Amazon does the same.

Edit: As corrected this should happen only first time.

Don't buy anything from Origin because your money goes to EA and you're forced to use Origin in most cases. That's enough for me.

Bought Bad Company 2 = Money is gone and no game in library, talked to support guys twice and all what i got is: We will be in touch via email and -15% code what cannot be used if the game is already on sale! G FUCKIN G!

I'm not buying anything from origin and not going too. There's no good games and prices are ridiculous.

Posting this again Read:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-06-david-demartini-origin-wants-to-be-the-hub and : http://www.screwattack.com/news/ea-says-steam-sales-cheapen-ip-origin-having-cheap-ip-sales-right-now and : http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-11-valve-counters-eas-steam-sales-cheapen-intellectual-property-accusation

Will buy Burnout from Steam, no origin. I regret buying ME3 from Amazon(it activates in Origin).

EA is greedy indeed, but I never experience this. People who say EA is bad and I am gonna be with steam, please be realistic. Steam has bad customer service, and this is a war between EA, Ubi, and Valve. Valve doesn't allow group to post deals to promote games on Origin. I don't think it is fair. And my opinion is they are all greedy, they are all bad. None of them are innocent and pure good.

I agree there's no worse company in gaming than EA for countless reasons (particularly the way they nickel and dime us), and the Origin client is unexciting and featureless, nothing more than a downloader (compared to the community on Steam). I downloaded Sims 3 once and then an expansion pack and it corrupted the entire thing. With no file verification (like Steam) all I could do was uninstall a whole bunch of gigs and download them all over again.

As much as I love Steam for a billion other reasons, Steam does do one thing that I think is probably the worst business practice of any retailer, however, by denying us duplicate copies of games. If you go to Best Buy or Walmart and buy a Terminator DVD box-set, when you already have T2 you bought a year ago, Best Buy doesn't remove the copy of T2 from the box-set before you can buy it. You get the extra copy. It's incredibly bogus that Steam denies us extra copies of something we pay for.

Just cut some grass or bushes with your sword and you should have more rupees in no time.

Meh.Just a few dollars,Nothing major.

It's a standard method for online merchants to check that your credit card is valid. Almost every online merchant will do this, so if you have a problem with them doing this, then you're pretty much out of luck.

If you let them store your credit card info, they will do this only the first time you use your card, and after that only if you haven't used your card with them for a while, typically 3-6 months.

As others have pointed out, the money is never actually removed from your account, it's only reserved. I.e., they "lock it" so that no other merchant can use it, but don't actually transfer it to their own account. Normally, reservations are used for things like the deposit on rental cars etc, and when you check in to a hotel, they will often reserve the room rate * number of days you're staying. This way, they can be sure that when you check out, you will be able to pay for the room. Or if you bang up your rental car, that they can collect the deductible on the insurance from you.

If having a few dollars "frozen" a couple days is such a big deal for you, then you should probably not be buying games in the first place. Either way, they're a fact of life with credit/debit card use, especially online use, so you either have to learn to cope with it, or start buying your games in person for cash.

This happened to me as well. ONLY on Origin. Bought things with steam and amazon, no charge.

Hate to say it but most likely its due to the country or where your card is billed from. If a company has issues with a certain region, stuff like this will happen to help stem off possible fraud.

not much of money really for more securities. I actually like that. :\

Just one more reason to hate EA. I personally never buy anything from them. The only games I have on Origin I received from trades. I'll never purchase anything of theirs, unless I get it in the store, and it won't be for PC, because of DRM and other bs. Although it probably doesn't happen where I'm at, it's good to know what kind of crap they're pulling with other people. Good on you for putting this out there. Kudos.

That amount is placed on your card as a verification method but never actually charged to you.. what's so damaging to you?

okay..8 days have past..i am yet to receive the money..i am going to talk with an EA advisor now..

the ea advisor told me take this issue with the bank...

I remember this happened to me as well when I bought Mass Effect 3 DLC off Origin. It's an unusual practice for sure, though in my case, EA did return what I was charged in about a week or so after I made the purchase.