It is all well and good that credit card companies are constantly monitoring to stop a thieffrom charging fraudulent expenses to your card. But what happens when they mistake you for a thief?
This happened to me this week. I was booking an international flight for 5 people with an airline for later this year. As I will be traveling with an infant/lap passenger this required a call in to the airline directly. Everything was going along smoothly until the payment process. I give my credit card information and it is declined, then declined a second time, leaving me frustrated at a loss of what to do. There was almost nothing on this card as I had paid the monthly balance just a few days earlier.
See- I only carry one credit card. I’m not a huge fan of debt so don’t have a ton of revolving accounts. My company carries a travel card for me, I have a card I use for travel and online purchases. The remainder of my finances are handled with cash or debit. I wasn’t about to put travel with a debit card. I, embarrassingly, asked Sid to put the airlines on her card to complete the transaction.
I called up the card company and after about 5 minutes was routed to Erica, my friendly customer service representative for the evening. She took my card number, name and ask me my super-secret question. Erica then informed me she would need to call me back at my registered phone number. I hung up to receive a call from her about 2 minutes later. She asks me a few more questions to ensure I was indeed the owner of the account. She then offered to approve the flight fee they had earlier declined. I informed her that I had already taken care of that particular transaction and only needed to be able to use the card moving forward. She replied, “Shoot, guess we missed that transaction.” She cleared my account. Then she asks where I planned to travel and what dates to keep my credit card active if I was flagged during my journey. All in all, it was a quick friendly conversation…despite having caused massive frustration when actually booking the trip.
So what went wrong? After a quick bit of internet research, it appears I was victim to the credit card companies AI anomaly analysis. Apparently, the fact I am not an international traveler most of the time flagged my account due to unusual activity. Credit card companies have software that reviews every transaction for up to 200 different data points, everything from where you live, normal buy patterns, spending patterns, and last geographical transaction to build a profile. If the analysis doesn’t add up the card will be blocked and purchases declined. In this case because I’ve never used this card to fly internationally it was out of norm and blocked.
Here are some tips if you are traveling:
-Keep your company contact info handy when you travel. The toll free number is on the back of the card but with frequent used can be rubbed off. It is a better practice to keep the phone number stored in your phone. That will also help if the card is lost or stolen.
-Carry a backup credit card. I have heart burn with this one but will probably pick up a second travel card prior to my trip this summer. A preloaded card may be a great option as a backup to your main card.
–Call ahead and your card company can “approve’ travel as non-suspicion activities.
-Be sure that a card company has your mobile phone on file. If you are traveling it may be the best avenue for the company to contact you. If you only have a landline home phone on file it can get a bit messier proving you are who you say you are.
-Text alerts…be sure you sign up for text alerts and look for them if a card is declined. Often the card issuer will send a yes/no text to approve the suspicion activity to an approved mobile phone. It’s a good service.
Being blocked by mistake certainly was annoying but it’s a good sign that the credit card company is on the job attempting to prevent fraudulent activity.
Keep Runnin’ Ugly
Mike
iRunUgly 