Hello, I wonder if anyone could shed any light on the following. My wife's aunt recently treated us to a short stay in an hotel. When it came to settling up she offered her debit card for payment - having previously ensured that her account contained sufficient funds. She typed her pin into the card reader and after a minute or so, and to her acute emabarrasment, the machine declined the transaction. My wife then offered her debit card and the same thing happened - even though our account also had more than sufficent funds. Finally my wife offered her mastercard credit card which went through with no problems. All cards (including the mastercard) were issued by Nat West, so we popped over to the local Nat West to see what the cause was. The manager blathered on about glitches and how it was always a good idea to carry a credit card. However, we were really none the wiser about why this happened - though he did assure us that the debit cards should have worked even though the amount was around 1000GBP. He also warned us that our debit cards would probably be locked and took us to a hole in the wall where he showed us how to unlock the card. So, does anyone know what might have caused this and how it can be avoided? Thanks Jeff

What type of card was it? Most hotels do not accept Visa Electron or Solo Debit Cards or so I was told.

Debit Card Declined?

Aug 31, 2008 22 Replies

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Mike 17 years ago

Just as a matter of interest, does anyone know if some banks are more prone to stopping customers' unusual transactions than others? I keep hearing about people falling foul of over-sensitive transaction pattern-matching, yet I've never experienced any rejections or referrals, despite buying the occasional car with a debit card and using ATMs in countries off the beaten trail.

I'm just curious about whether my bank (Nationwide) has a somewhat laxer approach than others or whether they recognise a quality customer who shouldn't be inconvenienced :-)

Mike.

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tim..... 17 years ago

same here (without the cars)

tim

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David Woolley 17 years ago

I meant 100.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000%

Hardly 100% either. A 100% solution has to consider the possibility of being struck by a large meteorite during the transaction, or very improbable, but theoretically possible statistical or quantum mechanical effects.

You'll often see this difference in the way that financial service companies and engineering ones specify computer system performance. The engineering company will specify that the performance be met 99% of the time, but the financial service company will insist that it be met 100% of the time. That difference can make a huge difference to cost, or even to feasability.

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