You are in Walmart with a cart full of stuff. At checkout, you use your credit card, and it returns declined. No idea why. You have no other way to pay. How would you react? Is the personal inconvenience, or the embarrassment in a public setting more distasteful to you?
Also, how are the cashiers trained to react in such situations?
This happened to me when I was grocery shopping not too long ago with my check card. On a Sunday too. My bank locked my card for some stupid reason, some fishy transaction or something. Anyway, so cashier took my groceries and put them in the walk-in cooler while I called my bank. My bank opened my card long enough for me to pull cash out so I can pay for the groceries and then locked it again. It was slightly embarrassing but I was more annoyed than anything.
This has happened to me many times. Usually it’s because I’m using it in another country so they put a fraud hold. So the walmart cashier suspends the transaction while I call in, the bank unlocks it and I pay. I feel a little annoyed but get over it pretty quickly.
Sometimes the bank goes down, sometimes the machine just stuffs up. No one cares because the card could be declined for any reason.
I have a debit card which gets declined all the time because I forget to put money into it. No big deal really.
I would be more worried about how you manage your finances week to week, because compound interest can lead to some pretty big expenses.
I find if you need to use credit you should get a direct debit from your bank account so that it is paid off each week to avoid fees, interest and late charges.
You should also get access to as much credit as possible when you can get it, but it takes organisation not to use it and sometimes people get in over their heads.
I prefer to withdraw how much cash I want to spend from the atm at the start of the week so that I don’t go over. Good luck !
Yep, I’ve had it happen too - fraud hold. Mostly annoying.
This happened to me once, when I had paid off a balance. I paid $10,000 to my bank (payment in full) and they put a temporary stop on my credit card. I had never been late with monthly payments, so I was surprised when they put a temporary stop for about ten days on it. I guess they were waiting for the check to clear. They did not notify me, which they should have, as I was turned down in a store. I have found the best way when something like that happens, is to joke about it with the store clerk. I have been in far more embarrassing situations over the years, so I just put it in perspective.
I just laugh it off and say to the cashier, “I don’t know why I keep using these stolen cards,” and pull out another one. I have to do it quickly though because I am, of course, using stolen credit cards.
Happened to me today. I forgot my pin number, went to the bank to reset it, my card got declined when I went to the supermarket afterwards. I did have other ways to pay though.
I’ve always had another way to pay, either another card, or by check, or by cash.
The best way is to pay it in full on the due date. That way you attract no interest and you can make the most of the extra cash sitting in an offset mortgage account or an interest earning account.
I’d ask them to just hold the transaction or do whatever they need to do while I call the bank. My credit cards are all big enough (Chase, American Express etc) that they have 24 hour customer service. Hopefully I can get it sorted out while I’m still there. Otherwise I’ll apologize and leave.
As someone who runs a small store where this happens frequently by people who don’t understand it, you should see the reactions we get. People get mad at the cashier, they act like she did it on purpose. I’ve had people call me later in the day and ‘demand to speak to the cashier because I want to know why she declined my card’. Almost everyone says "Well that’s not right, I just deposited my paycheck in there 15 minutes ago and I just got gas and stopped at Kohls and it works there’ (which means 100 dollars is available now and the rest is available tomorrow and you already spent 90 of it) or some other excuse but it’s never, ever their fault. I’ve learned to stay close by when I hear the sound the terminal makes when the card declines just because some people get a bit loud about it and I’m good at calming them down and explaining that they need to call the number on the card we don’t know why it was declined and there’s nothing we can do about it (and running it 8 more times won’t change it) and no, you can’t just take the stuff anyways and come back and pay for it later.
And back in the day, if your debit card declined we wouldn’t let you write a check. Now that we have a Telecheck machine it’s fine since once that machine gives us the OK on the check, the funds are more or less ours. Even if that check were to bounce we’ll never even know about it.
My bank sent me a new debit card once, which I activated over the phone. I took the old one out of my wallet and proceeded to walmart. Yep, new card declined. I had failed to read the part of the instructions that mentioned you had to wait 24 hours after activating it over the phone. The cashier kept my stuff while I went home to get my old card (thankfully I hadn’t destroyed it). When I came back the cashier actually said she didn’t think I would be back.
I was in no way embarrassed, I knew I had the money. I was only very mildly annoyed at myself for not reading the instructions.
Physician, heal thyself!
Re the OP:
I always have a second credit card with me because this happened to me a few times when I was traveling. A phone call to the bank was all that was required, but it didn’t save me from the mild embarrassment of having a card declined.
I highly recommend that everyone sign up for fraud alerts, if offered. You won’t ever be surprised by erroneous holds again. If there are any issues, you’re immediately notified via text or email or phone (your choice). This allows you to take care of any issues immediately, before you step up to the next cash register.
I’ve been alerted twice in the past 2-3 years of potential fraudulent charges, and both were, indeed, fraudulent. In fact, I’m rather amazed at how well the fraud detection is working. Just last year we traveled to Niagara Falls (Canada), Boston, Philly, and DC with no problems using our card. 2 weeks later, I got a fraud alert. Someone had purchased $100 worth of groceries at a grocery store in Canada, and an hour later attempted to charge another $300+ at another store. That resulted in the card being declined, and the card flagged. Within 20 minutes, I’d received the alert, called in, and had the card permanently deactivated.
I’m still mystified how they could differentiate between our legitimate spending and the fraudulent spending, but I’m glad that they did. It saved me from embarrassment and hassle, and it saved the bank from having to absorb that loss. Oh, and a scumbag thief was stopped dead in his tracks.
I’ve always had another way to pay on the very few occasions it’s happened, so not really a huge hassle.
Not fighting the hypothetical, I would ask them to hold my groceries for a moment and I’d get on the phone with the credit card company or my bank to figure out WTF was up, and get it resolved so I could buy my groceries. If I COULDN’T get it resolved, I’d apologize to the clerk and head home.
Way more embarrassing things happen in life. Cards get declined for all sorts of reasons, and unless you look/act like a thief, or look especially hard on your luck, they’re not even going to remember anything happened.
I never have no other way to pay, as I have multiple credit cards. However, if, for some reason, all of them were blocked, I’d do as the other poster have done and call the company to see what’s up.
That was me, but it should also be noted that I have a near zero balance on credit cards with $15,000-$20,000. They get paid off every time I get paid (it’s just part of what I do each week). IOW, if my card gets declined it’s likely not ‘my’ fault so a call should clear it up.
The people that I deal with that scream and shout at the cashier and tell me how the bank made a mistake and say that it just worked at the gas station so it should work here and that I should try it again (for the third time), I gather are the people that have $27 in their debit account* or the last time they looked at their credit card statement they were at $3107 and the limit is $3000 but they made a $150 payment and forget about the interest knocking it back over the limit. IOW, it’s probably their fault but if they make enough noise maybe I’ll feel bad enough to just make it work or look the other way and let them take the stuff.
*When a debit card is going to get declined it’ll (at least on my machine) it’ll tell me how much is available in the account and give me the choice of turning down the transaction or taking what’s available and collecting the rest another way. And again, so many people tell me ‘well, I just deposited a $3000 check in their this morning’. But like I said, it’s just easier to tell them to call the bank then to try to explain anything to them. Besides, for all I know they were $4000 negative to begin with. I’ll let them yell at the bank, it’s not my problem.
The business-expense credit card issued by the government agency that I work for got canceled one time while I was on business travel, because it was one of a group of numbers whose security might have been compromised by a processing contractor. This became a problem when a change in plans required me to change my return flight, because there was a fare adjustment involved, and I had no way of paying it (on federal government, one has to use the government card for airfare, or else it won’t be reimbursed). I had to call my supervisor and have him basically buy me a return ticket on his card, and I paid him back. My director gave the security people of piece of her mind after that.
This happened to me once after I had just returned form a trip abroad, and was at Macy’s trying to buy a mattress. For some reason the fraud alert kicked in after I already got home, and nobody was available on a Saturday evening in the fraud department to straighten it out. The Macy’s salesperson didn’t worry about it at all and let me schedule delivery anyway, figuring out the problem would be resolved by the time the thing was delivered (it was).
Your bank must be better than mine. My only alert was stupid, IIRC it was something like they waited over a week to send me a fraud alert for an online video game purchase with a company I’ve bought from frequently, then went ahead and flagged two small purchases from the previous day (of the alert, not the initial purchase), and I think those were for a burrito place near the train station (multiple purchases there per year) and the pharmacy two blocks from my house (lots of purchases over the last decade). I’m sure I’ll be happy if they catch a real crook, but I just couldn’t figure that one out at all.
Sort of similar - I only noticed I had forgotten my wallet at home after getting in line with a full cart of groceries.
I quickly reverted to “stocker” and did some reverse shopping.