I'd really like to understand this part of the process. A couple of people have reported their cards being charged around the 18th and 19th with no movement on their orders since (at least they hadn't said anything by yesterday). My available balance dropped on Tuesday evening so Apple have clearly tickled my VISA card but there's nothing popped up on my statement and 2 days later my order status is still "processing" so I'm left wondering what's going on?!
Credit availability reduction is an authorization. Merchants can do an authorization for X amount of $, which is "held" for usually about a week, and the authorization is good for a month. Authorized mean the issuing entity guarantee the fund is available for when the merchant finally "Batch" out all of their orders for the night.
When you're in authorization hold, the amount is deducted from your available line of credit, but that amount is not yet actually taken out as a transaction, this is why you wouldn't see it on your statement as an actual transaction. It's also why sometimes if you use CC at a gas station, it'll show sometimes the available credit line dropping by like $100 for a $30 purchase, then might take another day or two to normalized after the station batch up those transactions and charge your card the correct amount.
After about a week, most issuers will reverse the hold. The merchant can still charge the card, but the guaranteed fund available get more interesting...
Until it actually show up on their card statement, it's not really a Charge, only an Authorization, so I'm not sure if everyone reporting the charge is actually in their description.
And someone above said merchant don't charge until shipping time, which is not exactly a law. It's a good practice in case they have order cancellations. A merchant's discount rate with their processor goes up when there are charge backs, or if they have a large number of merchant cancellations. The best way to avoid that is to only do authorizations until you're sure you can fulfill the order.
