Egg keep blocking my card 'for my protection'

I have had one or two credit cards that blocked transactions especially those from abroad in foreign currency, eg buying stuff from ebay in the US. I ditched those credit cards.

I have had other credit cards were I thought that the credit card company was at fault for declining a transaction, but when I actually phoned them up, they had confirmed that they hadn't declined anything, it was in fact the processing company in the US (or elsewhere) where the transaction had failed.

Usually I find that the problem here is that the address details do not match exactly. For example the processing company in the US (not usually the company you are buying goods or services from) may include the name of the county you live in, or even the local area and this has failed the transaction. When they have removed this though, so that it just has the first line of your address, your post code and your city or town, then the transaction has gone through okay.

In your case it does sound like you have a credit card company that is a bit 'anal'.

John

Girobank Visa and Barclaycard Visa do this to me regularly.

Just before Xmas last year my wife used our Goldfish card to top up her mobile phone. As a result of this "suspicious" activity, the card was then referred three times while she was doing her Christmas shopping. That's effecively the same as declining the transaction, as till operators aren't going to sit there on the end of a phone for ages trying to get through to the authorisation centre. When I complained by phone, I was told that they had been trying to contact me, but couldn't get through - apparently because we had anonymous call barring enabled at the time. Of course it didn't occur to them to email me to ask me to get in touch with them.

I understand that some issuers only allow a certain number of transactions a day (Nationwide?), and decline any extra ones.

So no, it's not rare to have these problems. Given the amount of fraud, you can't really blame them for putting in "fraud detection" software. Unfortunately like most software of this type (anti spam software springs to mind) it doesn't always get it right. I recall the case of somebody who tried to buy a wedding ring with his Amex card. It was declined as it constituted an "unusual spending pattern".

I quite like Egg being proactive about security. I rarely use my Egg card <

100 per month and sometimes nil. In mid October I bought a satellite navigation system seventy miles from my home. The transaction went through ok. On the way out of the shop my mobile phone rang with an automated message to check the transaction was genuine.

Some four weeks later I travelled hundreds of miles and made about 5 100+ transactions. In one case I made two such transactions in the same shop. On calling home my wife said Egg had been trying to contact me at home. I then received another phonecall and the same automated process to approve my purchases.

It didn't disrupt my shopping, but made me feel they were being careful about transactions well outside my normal pattern.

Neb

Or to call non-anonymously, for that matter.

Goldfish 'did' me this Christmas.

I think my 'unusual transactions' must have been the weekly trip to Tescos.

They could not contact me either. However, I think that you are mistaken in assuming that they used the phone. Probably psychic communication - as it is cheaper. My telephone stores the last 50 calls in. None of these is unaccounted for.

My conclusion is that they play 'eenie-meenie-miney-mo' and mess up Christmas.

You can always call them though.

It does mean going through multiple 'pick a number' layers - one of which is to enter your card number.

When a voice speaks, they are very pleasant and helpful - even if they ask you for your card number - having waited for you to put the card away first.

Anyway, enjoy 2006.

flop

I use Marbles for the same purpose, never had any problems with them. Had several cases of fraud on credit cards I havent used on the net. So perhaps you should be checking your *other* cards more carefully :-)

In which shop have you had `online referral` treated as a `decline`, and did you ask to speak to the manager?

Cahoot offer a handy `webcard` thingy which gives you a one-time credit card number - I'm suprised more banks don't do this.

"Poldie" wrote

Agreed.

And you can "drag-and-drop" from their software's window to your browser, removing any possibility of entering the cc number incorrectly, or the CVV, or the required spelling of your name....

All good stuff!

BUT don't use it to buy an airline ticket online. Most (all??) airlines require sight of the actual credit card when you try to board, and of course you don't have one with the 'correct' number.

Mark BR

This is what most airlines tell you - but I have never been asked to produce my payment card - ever. The only place it was a slight inconvenience was getting a cinema ticket and Eurostar - where the self service ticket machines needed to read the payment card.

A *few* airlines. When I last booked a ticket online, I was given a list of about three that wanted to see the card at check-in, and I was indeed asked for my card when I travelled on one of them. I don't know what happens if you don't have the card with you, for example, because it is lost ot stolen, or you simply got a replacement card with a different number as happens with Nationwide debit cards.

There is another issue. I don't remember where I read it, possibly here, that somebody had a hard time explaining the concept of the webcard in Thailand when he wanted to get his plane ticket refunded.

What if you're travelling on a ticket bought for you by someone else with their card, and who's not accompanying you?

When booking it is pointed out that you can't.

Mark BR

Also Thailand at least one person I know has been bounce (by Cathy Pacific) when they could not produce the card used for the booking.

Mark BR

That would have been me.

Thai Airways asked to see my credit card when I tried to check-in for one of their flights a few weeks ago. I'd purchased the e-ticket with a Cahoot webcard and had to buy another ticket to get on the flight.

After that things just got worse. Their ticket office refused to process the refund for the old ticket unless I could produce the credit card used to purchase it with. I still haven't worked out how I'm going to get my money back from them.

Chris

Several times I have bought tickets for my wife, children and not travelled myself. Both on internal (UK) flights and overseas. Has never been a problem.

MikeW