Concept of Holding a reservation

[cancer10]

Hi Experts!

I have a question and will be grateful if you can help me out with some ideas.

In an online hotel or ticket booking reservation system, normally a user is allocated a specific time to complete their registration / payments etc and during that time the system holds the reservation for that user. If the user is unable to finish their registration during that time the system times out and the user is not allowed to proceed any further. The system unholds the reservation for other users.

My question is, if a user is taken to the payment gateway system (paypal etc) and they spend all of the allocated/hold time on the payment page, and after making a successful payment they return back to the site, will the system still allow them to complete the booking even though the user ran out of his allocated time?

How does this work in a typical booking system?

Many thanks in advance.

[NewEra]

I'm sorry but I'm a bit confused did you pay already your fees or not ??
if your returned back to the page and even the time was done you should still see on your credit card or paypal which ever payment method you used if the money was taken if it was then you could do anything you would like, from there and you would be sure that you made your reservation clearly