Welcome to the "Banks Suck" club.
I went on a bit of a rant on this about a year ago...
Merchants Protect Consumers
The banks don't actually take the money out of their account. The put a hold on the amount that is authorized for a period. Lat customer I talked to was told by their bank the hold was for 10 days. They requested that a fax a letter to their bank with a whole bunch of info in order to release the funds. If I did that every time AVS declined a transaction I'd get nothing done.
Bottom line... there's nothing you can do and still protect yourself.
Banks suck! The take no responsibility for anything and throw it all upon the merchant and don't care who they inconvenience.
These types of transactions are a daily occurrence for me. I field emails and phone calls on a regular basis because of it. When it happens, I tell my customers the truth.
I tell them that we take the potential unauthorized use of their credit card very seriously and we make every effort to protect them from potential fraud. I tell them that their bank verifies literally nothing when it comes to approving transactions made online with their credit card and that we attempt to verify as much information as we can in order to protect them.
One thing you can do when this happens is to capture the transaction that has been declined. Once you've satisfied yourself that the transaction is legitimate, go into your virtual terminal and capture only using the authorization number.
I keep typing but that would only lead me into another rant on how and why banks suck. It's too early in the day and I'm in too good a mood this morning to get started... again.
Dave