So I’ve just been doing some Christmas shopping this morning. Getting presents for the family from Amazon.com and Thinkgeek.com
I’ve literally just submitted my order to Thinkgeek less than 15 minutes ago - the receipt email has only just hit my inbox. I’ve just finished checking the receipt email and confirming it’s all good, when my phone rings. Now, bear in mind that it’s currently 0959 on a Sunday morning in my local location. It’s my credit card company’s fraud department, asking if I’ve just placed an order for Thinkgeek.com because they’ve noticed an unusually high amount of international orders placed on my card in the last 24 hours. I confirm it was me, it’s all good.
I dunno about anyone else, but I’m pretty chuffed that Virgin Money are on the ball enough regarding international transactions on my CC to call me on a Sunday morning to confirm that it really was me putting those transactions through. With the amount of shopping I do online, I do sometimes worry about fraudulent transactions and it’s nice to know that at least if anything big went through, Virgin would be on it and let me know.
It shits me though, that you can ring them before you travel overseas with your itinerary and they will still stop your card. I don’t like to use pissy traveller’s cheques or carry much cash, so this is a potential huge PITA for me.
I was trying to buy 3 sets of airplane tickets last month. The first purchase went through fine. The second stalled - I thought it was because of unavailable flights - went on to the third with no luck. Turns out Citibank had frozen the account after I made the first purchase. I suppose it was because of multiple big purchases - but they didn’t bother to call me and let me know. Grrr.
Declining every purchase over $100, sending me an email 3 days later saying there was a potentially fraudulent attempted charge, and then cancelling the account because of lack of use, right before the American Purchasing Frenzy (aka “christmas”) isn’t exactly what I had in mind.
Every freaking charge I will ever make will NOT be in my zip code, because the only fucking thing to buy in my home zip code is COWS (ya know --the big poopy critters who say Moo.) and Mr. Bradley doesn’t take Visa.
Thanks HBSC, for letting me know that you do not want my money. That makes it easier for me to stick with AmEx and Bank of America. B of A pisses me off once in a while, but the damn card is actually usable!
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some shite fraud prevention as well.
I tried to use my Visa card (debit card, attached to my primary savings account & my primary ATM card to boot) to buy something from US iTunes. They gave me the error message saying you can’t use an OS CC to buy from iTunes in the US - but not before putting through a $1 authorisation check fee.
Well, my bank didn’t like that and shut down my card. And didn’t tell me. And I didn’t find out until I was at the shops trying to get cash out of an ATM. Luckily there was a bank branch there and I went in, we discussed it and they unlocked it. But not a word was spoken to me to check if the transaction was mine or not.
Yup, my parents’ card company (forget which one, maybe Citibank) doesn’t think anyone legitimately travels anywhere, ever. They shut down my parents’ card every time they travel out of town, and call it “fraud prevention.” This is asinine given that my parents have a $50,000 limit. Most people would assume that adults of those means would travel occasionally. Not this company.
My parents understandably forgot about this when my 27 year old sister died unexpectedly, back in February. We had to go to Virginia to claim the body and have the funeral. CC company shut down my parents’ card on the morning of the memorial service. She spent the whole morning on the phone trying to get it turned back on so she could pay for important things. The first person she talked to was very rude and basically told my mother to f–k off. It took a couple of hours on the phone to convince them to turn the card back on.
'Cause, you know, your typical fraudsters use stolen credit card numbers to buy items like the following:
I’ve had my card locked for no reason also. In fact IIRC it was Shittibank that did the deed. I’d made a couple of purchases at overseas vendors (the French version of Amazon, for shipment to a francophone friend stateside, and an Australian bookseller, for an Aussie friend). In fact, their suspicion was reasonable as those were odd transactions. But did they tell me? NO! They simply let me find out the hard way - by bouncing purchases I was attempting to make.
They did this on two separate occasions.
At that point I canceled the card.
To the OP: You’ve got a good bank, if they’re actually bothering to notify you!
I hope when things settled down your parents called the company, explained the situation and told the company to shove their credit card up their collective asses providing there was room left over after they had shoved their own heads up there and then took their lovely $50,000 credit limit elsewhere.
My boyfriend has the same problem with his card every time he travels, even if he informs them in advance, they put a hold on his account when he uses it out of town.
My company, Bank of America, doesn’t give a shit, and probably still won’t should I ever be a victim of fraud but hey, at least I can travel without fear of them putting a hold on my account.
I occasionally get calls, often asking me to confirm my Internet porn purchases, which are never particularly large charges. The charges usually have discreet names, but sometimes it’s clear that it’s something interesting. Also, when it first happened to me, I had never paid any attention to how the charges are listed, so I was panicking, expecting them to read off a list of the websites I had been to.
I have a BoA Visa as well, and they’ve never once given me any hassle when i’ve been traveling. Trips across the country? Trip to Australia? New Zealand? No problem.
I have used Citibank all over the US and Italy without giving them an itinerary or anthing, and they did not bat an eye, nor did they stop my use of my card. On the other hand, I guess if the card was stolen they would not have stopped that either. Hmm. I wonder why Citibank has such diverse rules.
Sometimes I wonder at fraud prevention algorithms. I had a VISA shut down on me because of suspicious activity overseas (Tokyo) – on my 14th or 15th trip, having used the same card literally hundreds of times there before. AmEx had a merchant ask me to call their Hong Kong office the first time I used it there, but it was a 10 second [free] call.
They can, 'cause that’s what they do if you report the thing stolen.
I’ve not known of them doing it though. Any time I’ve had a lost/stolen one used, the bank didn’t refuse the transactions or freeze the account (even though there was no longer any money in the account) until the thing was reported stolen. YMMV.
CitiBank seems to be a bot over zealous in shutting down my card. Only once was it real fraud… I was in Mauritius and someone bought a tank of petrol (gasoline) in Ohio and a day later went to a Home Depot in Florida.
They shut it down and sent a replacement card when I returned to Dubai. Mostly though I have to call them and give them my travel plans so they don’t shut me off.
They did it to me in January. I’d gone to Mexico over the holidays, and used the card maybe 3x, always to withdraw cash. I’d even told them my travel plans ahead of time. A week after I got back, I was in the middle of buying a mattress, when the card froze up. I had much more in the account than I needed to buy the mattress, so I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. I called the auto balance inquiry number, which told me the same thing. I tried to get a live customer service rep on the line, but it was Saturday evening, so no luck. After a couple more tries on the automated line, I couldn’t even get balance information there, either - they put a total lock on my account. Happily Macy’s let me go ahead and schedule delivery, etc., and told me to call back as soon as I straightened things out with my bank.
By the time I got home, there was a message from the Chase Visa anti-fraud unit on my answering machine. I was PISSED. Sure, it was great that they caught a suspicious transaction and contacted me, but a) why did they not care about the transactions several thousand miles from home, but stopped the one less than 10 miles from home? and b) I TOLD THEM I WAS TRAVELING! but apparently nobody recorded the info. What if I’d gotten stuck thousands of miles from home with no cash because of those morons?
