Also, an ATM card isn’t as restricted as you might think. Mine is part of the Interlink / NYCE / Plus networks, which means that it works at most bank’s ATMs, including overseas. I can also use it to get cash back from grocery stores and the like. I just have to use a PIN.
There are people who don’t pay off their balance in full? :eek:
There are people who pay an annual fee? :smack:
The reason I’ve had a credit card for decades is that:
- I get free ‘insurance’ if I use my credit card e.g. on airline collapses
- I get benefits when I use it (currently my phone bill is lowered by 1% on all purchases)
Obviously I’ve never paid a credit card company a penny.
Every dumb remark I’ve made on this board is copyrighted? I feel elevated.
In Canada, all banking cards are ATM/debit cards and do not have Visa or Mastercard logos.
This is because every ATM and bank and credit union and merchant, from the bank branch at the giant skyscraper downtown to the general store in East Yak Breath, Manitoba, are connected to a nationwide online debit system called Interac. Interac started when several banks cross-connected their ATM networks, so that banking cards from one bank could be used in the other’s ATMs for cash withdrawls. Then they started to hook up the point-of-sale terminals at merchants.
Our banking cards are usable as debit cards in ATMs in the States and overseas on the Plus or Cirrus systems, and recently we started to be able to use them at merchants in the States whose PoS terminals are on the NYCE system.
“ATM card” and “debit card” are pretty much synonymous in Canada, and they are completely-separate from credit cards such as MasterCard and Visa.
You forgot the ass-raping double-dipping the banks engage in with these systems. 
Which ass-raping double-dipping? You mean the one where every ATM charges you $1.50 if you are not a customer of the bank that own it (and the white-label ATMs owned by convenience stores charge everyone)?
I don’t pay any service charges to use my Canadian TD Canada Trust ATM card (whether at a real ATM or at a store). I’m not foolish enough to stick my ATM card in another bank’s ATM machine (and am definitely not foolish enough to stick my card in one of those non-bank “ATM” machines).
Hell, I’ve had AmEx for more than a decade, and have never paid an annual fee. They have several cards available without one.
Great customer service, by the way. They’re the only card I’ve ever actually had a fraudulent charge on, and they look care of everything as soon as I called and I never had to think about it again.
Yeah, and I asked for one as well. Here’s what PIRG has to say about debit cards:
BTW, IIRC Wells Fargo’s super-special liability protection plan mumbo jumbo for the debit card had a few loopholes that made it less encompassing than federally mandated protections for the credit card.
All that said, I know people who use debit cards as a way of enforcing spending discipline on themselves.
That article up above is pretty old- it was talking what would happen in 1997. Is it still accurate?
Not always true and debit cards will also get flagged and placed in suspension.
I had it happen over Christmas. I went to three stores and used my debit card with no issues.
Then later in the evening I went to Walmart and boom card no worky. Not at the register and not at any ATM.
When I called the debit card carrier on Monday I was told that the cashier must have made some type of error at the register and the card was put through 6 times. I told them that I had tried it once as a credit and it did not got through and the cashier pushed some buttons here and there on the swipe pad and then I tried it as debit and it also did not work. The error she made caused it to freeze the card.
I have also had them call me twice about strange debits so I could verify them and one time there was illegal activity at a merchant that I had used my card at in the past and they called to let me know they were going to have to cancel my card and issue me a new one for my own credit protection.
I have my account through a creidt union though so maybe that makes a difference.
I don’t pay a yearly fee on my credit card either, nor do I pay interest (I pay it off at the end of the month, every month).
Another benefit of this is, if someone steals the card info and charges up some stuff, I can contest the charge and not pay… as opposed to a debit card where they’re possibly going to make me bounce checks, and I have to fight with the bank to get my own money back.
Re the OP: I’ve had similar things happen. Ordered books from overseas vendors, to be sent to alternate addresses (in one case it was from Australia to a friend in Australia, in another case it was from France, to be sent to someone in another US state). Reasonable grounds for suspicion, actually, and I don’t blame the bank for flagging the account.
HOWEVER - in both cases, I had placed similar orders a few months before and had no trouble. And in both cases, the bank made ZERO effort to contact me: I found out when purchases I was trying to make - online and in meatspace - started getting declined. Very embarassing! IIRC, this was Bank of America, and I did cancel the card after the second incident.
The person I spoke with at BofA actually said they never try to contact the cardholder when they do this. HELLO?!?!?!?!?!?!? Think the cardholder might like to know their card had been compromised? Maybe other cards have been stolen too? Morons! (the bank, not the cardholder)
AND I’ve had charges get declined on my current account: it was Labor Day weekend and we were, quite reasonably, doing a lot of back-to-school shopping. The bank decided this represented an unusual amount of activity (never mind the purchases were all at places we’d shopped before, and all within 10 miles of our house) and decided it was time we stopped stimulating the economy.
WFT?
LLO!
Quoted Truth For.
It’s Latin… Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Stupid dyslexia.
Did anyone else notice the credit card numbers in the original post have a pattern to them? The digits that change between the two numbers were the original digit doubled. Such a geek.
Thank you for this rant. Next week I leave for Kyrgazstan so I guess I need to let my bank know tomorrow so I don’t have problems because I know I will.
I had problems in the Army when I got sent to Korea. I would make a purchase on post, and then shortly later off post. The card would stop working. Call the bank, and find out that the purchase on post was credited through a US bank, and the purchase off post of course went through a Korean bank. They thought it was stolen, and killed it. I explain I am in the military stationed overseas. They flag my account so it will not happen again except it happened twice more before they got it right.
-Otanx
LOL!
There are, I have a couple, all the big four banks have at least one, but you have to ask/whinge/moan or threaten to go to another big four bank. Mostly, though, just call your bank and ask, that’s all I did.
My bank has a green dragon logo and recently got eaten by another, bigger bank but is still pretty good, look there.
To my knowledge, there have not been additional federal protections extended to debit card users. From a 2006 article: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06125/687615-68.stm
There’s more in the link. Cyberthieves apparently prefer debit to credit cards and there’s the risk of overdrawing your bank account.
The OP must have the same CC my wife does. They just accept and block charges randomly. $3000K tickets to Disney, sure thing. $7 for lunch in the town where they we live, suspicion of fraud. Good job, boys.
I’m sure you don’t want a factual answer in the Pit, so I’ll speak softly and not use my stick, but I think the problem is we don’t know the algorithm used to decide which charges are suspicious, what factors are included, and how they are weighed. The one thing that appears NOT to be is that the algorithm is heuristic, which would learn from your past activity to predict the future. Strange, as that is how I would have programmed it.
You may not be out of the woods yet. Did they tell you about the *triple-*secret probation? I thought not.