So, planning a vacation at a condo out of state. I’m not going say where or when, but there will be a beach involved. I made the reservation online and the first payment – just over a month ago – failed. I ended up going to the bank to get the security hold taken off. Which is a good thing – I mean, odd purchases should trigger warnings – but they had tried to call me to verify and had the wrong number somehow.
For the second payment online, I got a Declined message. This was an evening last week and I decided to try and work this out with my bank’s customer service myself by phone.
I called the number on the back of my card, suffered through the prompts, and then said “credit card declined” when it asked me about the problem. I then put in the number and was then curtly told by the machine that it wasn’t a credit card. I didn’t have a chance to say, “sorry, it’s a check card” and got transferred to the queue for the Next Available Customer Service Associate.
After being warned about the “unusually high call volume”, I hung up and tried again – this time, telling it “check card declined”. I got more prompts that didn’t match the issue, then got transferred back to the queue again.
I waited and waited and then talked to a very helpful staff member. Who then transferred me to an equally helpful staff member. They both were tripping over themselves to apologize to me for the inconvenience – which was nice, but pointless. I’m glad the system is in place, but I just wanted to skip ahead to the verification and the fix.
We got it resolved and I told the guy I’d try it again since I still had the page up on the screen. Except that it had timed out in all the time I spent on hold.
I thanked them for the help and hung up – then tried it again to success. I then got the all important receipt email of a successful paid in full and called it a night.
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Out in the woods today on a hike and my phone rings. I let it go to voice mail and when I hear the message it’s the bank again. I figure it’s related to the issues last week and didn’t deal with it right then – hey, I was in the middle of the woods. I didn’t realize how serious it was until my card got denied at Arby’s. And when you can’t get a roast beef – it’s serious.
I called the bank when I got home and it was trouble. My card was being used in Philadelphia and somewhere in Georgia – pretty much at the same time. We went through the transactions and sorted out which ones were valid from recently and which were bogus. They canceled my card and said they would issue a new one in a few days. If the transactions posted, I would need to go to the bank and get them sorted.
Could have been a lot worse and I’m glad they got things stopped. Still, annoying. And stressful. And, well, disappointing in humanity. I don’t know where the breach occurred – might have been the vacation thing, might have been the Target problem back in the day. Tonight, I need to get groceries and I’ll need to use my BP credit card. And I’m hoping I don’t trigger some kind of warning since I usually use this only to buy gas.
People.
[sigh]
Think I need to get out my Red Lantern ring of Rage and go bust some heads. And yes, I do have the ring in my possession AND I have the oath memorized to charge it up. Don’t mess with me.