Insane practices

melstin

I have a platinum card with a well known bank with an over £10k spending limit, having been a customer for over 25 years. During the past month I had 2 transactions declined, one for just under £100 and the other when I was trying to buy an airline ticket costing just over £1k.

Note that I still had over £9.5k available to spend and all the payments are spot on.

In addition to declining the last transaction, the bank also froze the CC account without telling me and when I called to enquire I was bombarded by a multitude of personal questions and questions related to items I had bought back in May 08. Eventually I lost my temper and I told them exactly where to stick their card.

Now they have emailed me twice asking me to call them, but I have decided not to bother with them any more.

Am I right or wrong?

exel1966

Quite simply - Wrong !

melstin

please elaborate..

It is clear that they want to keep me as a customer, but I'm not prepared to be insulted by some quasi illiterate spotty youth..

exel1966

You lost your temper, once that happens do you really expect them to help you ?

Now your turn to elaborate as to why they froze your account and declined the transaction ? I'm sure they had a very sensible reason.

ShelfStacker_3

melstin wrote: »

It is clear that they want to keep me as a customer, but I'm not prepared to be insulted by some quasi illiterate spotty youth..

That's hardly a fair thing to say.

I'm sure if you actually answered their calls and talked to them, they might shed some light on why your card was declined, so long as you don't call their staff "quasi illiterate spotty youths"...

melstin

They said the agency had not follow the "right" security procedure, whatever that means. They are the main UK agents of a very large foreign airline, in other words, a very reputable organisation, so where is the problem?

The CC company could easily have picked up the phone to ask me, if it was a legitimate transaction, instead they decided to make me lose face. Never mind I spend over £1k a month with them!

melstin

"I'm sure if you actually answered their calls and talked to them"

Do you remember all the items you bought using your CC card 6 months ago? I don't, specially because there are3 of us using the same account.

PinkTwirl

Hi,

I can understand why you lost your temper, it's not a hard thing to do when some of the questions are just ridiculous. I have resorted to hanging up the phone before losing my rag.

Have you got another card you can use? If so, then I can't see ditching it being a problem, but if not maybe best to hang on it, well, probably best to anyway as it's not going to do you any harm.

You never know, they may lower your APR or something like that.

JoolzS

They may have simply been trying to protect you if the items you were buying seemed unusual based on your card purchase history. I've had my card declined in the past and when I've phoned them to find out (or they've phoned me) it has been because of I've been buying things outside of my normal expenditure and that were probably items that get flagged as they are possibly often bought with stolen cards - I do remember that one of them was some very expensive concert tickets and I've never, ever bought concert tickets before with that particular card. They did ask me some "security" questions that I couldn't answer on the spot (such as what my credit limit was, what I had last bought, etc) but I asked to speak to a supervisor and got it sorted out very quickly.

Julie

normanmark

melstin wrote: »

I have a platinum card with a well known bank with an over £10k spending limit, having been a customer for over 25 years. During the past month I had 2 transactions declined, one for just under £100 and the other when I was trying to buy an airline ticket costing just over £1k.

Note that I still had over £9.5k available to spend and all the payments are spot on.

A classic case of someone's pride getting hit with regards to credit card transactions & how they think their limit makes them exempt to policies & procedure.

The transactions were declined by an automatic system, it looks at your pattern of spending & if it see's something its not happy with it'll flag up and block those transactions. Frustrating yes, but if it was a fraudster using the card illegally then i'm pretty sure you'd be grateful of systems like this.

melstin wrote: »

In addition to declining the last transaction, the bank also froze the CC account without telling me and when I called to enquire I was bombarded by a multitude of personal questions and questions related to items I had bought back in May 08. Eventually I lost my temper and I told them exactly where to stick their card.

They will block the card until you call up & verify details to make sure it was you making the transactions. Personal questions & questions related to items purchased are all valid, the advisor has to establish that there isn't a potential fraudster spending on your card. They would usually do this by going through previous transactions. The worst thing you could of done was to lose your temper, the person was only doing their job. Like i said, if the situation was different & someone was using it fraudulently i doubt highly that you would be as abusive.

melstin wrote: »

Am I right or wrong?

Wrong. Very wrong. I'd call back & at least apologise for losing your temper over what was a standard procedure for protecting both the banks money & your credit rating.

sabretoothtigger

Its a case of computer says no

The card was cancelled by a computer, afterwards a human will verify whether it is valid with your help.
Fussy questions sounds about right, I think just tell them to mail you a new card and use a different one is best. Never rely on just one firm imo