Not a Barclaycard rant

badger09

I'm not going to start a rant against Barclaycard, but here goes

I've had 2 Barclaycards (one Visa one Mastercard Cash Back) with £8k and £6.5k credit limits respectively for several years.

This evening I tried to book Business Class :T flights through Emirates to visit my son in Hong Hong in October. Cost was approx 1/3 limit of Cash Back card. Despite entering 'verified by Mastercard' (or whatever its called) details, the payment was not authorised . I was advised to contact payment provider - which I did. I was told a 'fraud marking' had been placed on my account, because of this transaction - not exactly an unusual transaction, as I like to travel . OK, I'm not too bothered so far, but unfortunately, Barclaycard fraud department are not answering their their phones so can I phone back in 1 hour.

Approx 1 hour 30 mins later I phone back - the fraud department is still offline 'Sorry I can't help. Have a good day. Bye' and the line went dead :eek:

I've managed to book my flights using another CC, and my long standing Barclaycard will soon be closed.

Do these organisations not give a flying f**k?

Elvisia

This happened to me all the time with my Egg card, it got to the point where it would be marked as fraud for every four transactions. I had to take out another credit card as a spare as I was so fed up of getting blocked, particularly when I was abroad. Since it's changed to Barclaycard they haven't blocked it once!! Even though I have been buying things from the States as it's so much cheaper. It's fair enough for them to block a transaction that looks fraudulent, but to not be available so you can ring up and get it unblocked it ridiculous, what if your flights had gone up in price in the 1.5 hours?

Hooloovoo

Badger, would that card happen to be an ex-Egg Money card by any chance?

I had exactly the same thing the first time I tried to use my converted Barclaycard to book some flights.

I was booking with eBookers, and the way they work is to bill the flights through the airline, and then bill their service charge directly.

So here's how it goes ...

Airline - £1500 charge - approved.
eBookers - £1 "card check" - declined.
eBookers - £1 another "card check" - declined.
eBookers - £15 fee - declined - card now blocked.

Because four transactions tried to go through in the space of a few seconds, Barclaycard blocked the card. But only after they had approved the main bulk of the charges.

Result, I had £1500 "pending" on my card, not knowing if the tickets had been ordered or not. I knew the airline fee had been approved but eBookers said the transaction had not been completed.

I called the number on the back of the card. Not sure which department I went to, but it was the usual Indian call center. I didn't get much, if any, help from them. This was about 10pm. They could see the pending amount on my card, but couldn't see any of the transactions. Great - that's the same info I can obtain myself from the website - what use is calling! He said there wasn't a block on my card. Clearly there was, it's just whatever systems they use had not synchronised yet so he couldn't see it.

I didn't want to use a different card to book the tickets in case the first lot had actually gone through - I knew the airline charge had been approved.

I ended up waiting a week until the pending charge had cleared, and then having to delay my trip by a month because all the prices had gone up.

I almost cancelled my card afterwards but I waited until I had calmed down and seen sense - there is no 1% cashback on all spending card available on the market any more so getting rid of my old Egg Money card would just be cutting my nose off to spite my face.

I now have a 3% cashback Aqua card, and a 0.5% cashback Capital One card as backups in case something like this happens again. But the Aqua card doesn't have a high enough limit for those sorts of transactions, and the Capital One card has less cashback.

Calling14

Well just had 1800 pounds fraudulently put onto my account buying electrical equipment. Not even questioned, rang call centre to complain, Indian one, found it hard to understand the person at the end of phone, who insisted I bought a washing machine - not owning a laundrette surely bit excessive amount would have alerted someones attention!!!

pheonixrising21

Well just be glad that the card was just blocked and not cancelled as happened to my fiancee. She made a couple of transactions to do with our wedding on her HSBC debit card, which were accepted. Then a few minutes later, she got a call from the HSBC fraud team. She didn't answer the phone in time, so called back. They told her that they thought there were a few fraudulent trasnactions on the account, made her verify all transactions for the previous few days. They were all genuine and she told them that she was buying things for a wedding. the guy said "oh congratulations, but sorry, I've cancelled the card - I'll have to send a new one out. It will be 5-7 working days to get it to you"

Needless to say she was furious at not having a debit card for potentially over a week!

I'm all for the fraud team doing their job and investigating transactions which look out of the ordinary, but suspend the card, don't cancel it! At least they were there to asnwer the phone though, so I guess thats a bonus over the OP

Elvisia

My worst experience with the Egg card was being stuck in Milan with no money (in the days when I had a proper job and could afford such things), I was working in France and had a French debit card but EDF took over 1,000 euros out due to a bill error on their behalf (which took 1.5 years to rectify) and my salary didn't go in on time. I kept a spare 1,000 euros in the account for emergencies but the EDF wiped it out and there was no overdraft facility. So I used my Egg card which was immediately stopped as it was showing as being used abroad. Fortunately I randomly had an old UK debit card in my purse which I used and managed to have enough overdraft on an old account to pay for my hotel. I was nearly really stuck though, and I couldn't buy anything else other than pay for the hotel as I was worried that debit card would be stopped too.

And I agree about the call centres, they talk very fast in a strong Indian accent and I find myself doing my best Marjorie Dawes impression "do it again? do it again?".

Hanky_Panky

badger09 wrote: »

Do these organisations not give a flying f**k?

Nor do they give a f**k about you flying........apparently !

smartpicture

It's not just Barclaycard/Egg, my Capital One card is blocked virtually every time I use it for more than a few transactions in one day. Making it useless for going shopping for the day, or buying a few things from Amazon or others who like to put every item through as a separate transaction. Or buying anything abroad. Their number actually appeared as one of my 'frequent numbers' on my phone bill!

In my experience, fraud departments are only open standard office hours, if it's cancelled then and you can speak to them you're ok and they'll unblock it, but if you like to shop outside of office hours then they don't even tell you it's blocked, your transactions just fail, and you can't get it unblocked until the next day.

lawstudent

Elvisia wrote: »

And I agree about the call centres, they talk very fast in a strong Indian accent and I find myself doing my best Marjorie Dawes impression "do it again? do it again?".

Actually made me laugh out loud. I have the same problem and I find it quite embarrassing to keep asking them to repeat themselves to be honest.