I got a text message that there was a possible fraudulent charge on my credit card. I wasn’t sure it was legit so I ignored it, I was able to pay for breakfast. My next two attempts were declined, so I called the credit card company. They asked if two 1 cent transactions from GrubHub*Perkins were valid.
I have GrunHub from work, and they pay $8 per lunch, anything over goes on my credit card.
I got lunch on FRIDAY (from Perkins), but the transactions were on SATURDAY so I guessed fraudulent.
Later I remembered that with the reimbursement, the charge may be delayed so the transactions may have been valid.
Too late, my card has been closed. I have a backup so not the end of the world, but now (well in two weeks) I get to transfer my automatic payments to the new card…
My previous credit card was extremely zealous about refusing random purchases, even an in-person purchase, during the months after there was an actual fraudulent attempt against it (so that I had to get a new card from them), and never with any explanation. These were transactions of a type that I had done dozens of times before. Finally, when they turned down an in-person $50 purchase at Bevmo (champagne for Christmas Eve) I made up my mind to get another card and stop using that one.
I hope you don’t have similar difficulties with your credit card provider with your new card.
Sometimes the algorithms they use to “detect fraud” are inexplicable. I have twice had large fraudulent charges go through in Europe, when I was simultaneously making routine in-person (card present) charges at grocery stores and gas stations in the U.S., and when the person attempting the fraudulent charge didn’t even know my name. And then, as you say, random routine purchase will be declined for no sensible reason.
What is also incredibly frustrating is that most banks will “for your convenience” no longer accept travel notifications when you are going abroad - don’t worry, we’ll just contact you if we see anything suspicious! The whole fucking point is that it may be difficult to contact me if I’m abroad, so I want to tell you beforehand what to expect, so that you don’t decline a $10 charge for my coffee in the airport.
In January of 2020 dad and I went to Disneyland. $90 in souvenirs in Star Wars Land was fine with my credit union. An hour later I tried to buy lunch for me and dad at the French Market. Declined! Like…why?
One of the explanations I have heard for this is that it’s partly up to the vendor whether they accept a questionable charge - but they have to eat it if it’s fraudulent. The problem with that is it disregards the inconvenience for the cardholder if they have to have a new card number issued after a fraudulent charge. I’d be fine with that if the conditions were that if a vendor chose to accept an obviously fraudulent charge (where they do not know my name, for example) there was a 200% penalty - credited to me, not the card issuer.
Since EMV cards became the norm, the rule is that if > 75% of a merchant’s charges are thru EMV, fraud is on the issuer. That’s how they got merchants.to switch.
Yeah, the AI is pretty smart–except when it’s not. Hey, hook it up to chatGPT, see how THAT goes!
My favorite bad AI incident was when a phone card got silently cancelled (yes, this was a while ago!) and when I called Sprint to ask why, they cited several calls from a NYC hotel. I pointed out that those calls were to my parents, whom I called using Sprint several times a month, and asked them what they thought the odds were that someone stole my card number so they could call my parents. Doh.
I’ve had several fraud alert questions, and only two of them were actually purchases I made. Legit ones were a laptop purchase and the other, changing a flight reservation.
Twice I’ve had meals purchased at a restaurant that I have only been to once, years before. Hmmm. Apparently, Psycho Suzie’s Motor Lounge doesn’t run a clean business. The purchases were made with different cards, but both cards were connected to the same bank account.