Ed Bollion tells a funny story where during his cannonball run, his credit card was declined because he was moving too quickly between gas stations, since he was averaging like 100+mph or something like that.
Even in a small geographical area, I’d imagine getting pre-auths for tanks of gas multiple times per day would trigger some kind of unusual activity flag.
Chase blocked my card when I was on vacation because they … don’t let you tell them you’re on vacation anymore. They’re like “nonono let us try to guess it’s so much more fun for us”
Same for Capital One, the card that people get because of no foreign transaction fees.
LIke they straight-up tell you “Oh there’s no need for you to notify us of travel, your card will just work” and upon every use you get smacked with a 2FA verification that’s tied to your local phone number, so you’re basically screwed if you don’t have service or service over WiFi.
TBF, scammers are legit getting scary effective with AI tools. Banks are going to get way more paranoid by necessity.
Ain’t life grand?
So funny story. I once went to the beach for the weekend, but my card was declined when I got to the hotel. When I called the bank on Monday, they told me it was because it was used in two different states in the same day. I’m like, “Yeah, I got gas when leaving home and drove to the hotel. You realize the two states are connected, right?!” Six months later, my card number was stolen from somewhere and was manually keyed in three times at Universal Studios for charges of a little over a grand on a Friday evening. When I discovered it and contacted the bank on Monday morning, they wanted to investigate. They said that, if the charges were indeed found to be fraudulent, they would return my money in 5-10 business days. I was irate. I told them, “I tried to use my card to pay for a hotel and you declined it to protect my money from ME. But when the bad guys ready did steal my info and are keying in numbers instead of using the actual card - not at all suspicious - for over $1000, your answer is ‘seems legit, here ya go.’ And when I report it, you look at me suspiciously and tell me that it’s going to be 1-2 weeks before I can even get my money back?!? I can assure you that as soon as you give me my money back, I will be withdrawing it and going to another bank.” And sadly I had been a customer with zero issues for almost 20 years at that point. Needless to say they got off their butt, called home office, and my money was back in my account before I walked out.
I try to spend my money, the bank: “Nope.”
Bad guys want to spend my money, the bank: “Carry on!”
The system was never built to benefit us
Something like this happened to me and I was beyond pissed, literally I would’ve had to sleep in my car if the hotel didn’t let me pay later. It was in the same state too.
Luckily my wife banks at a different bank, and we used her debit card.
My bank is very veery careful about that, in the sense of blocking basically all the online purchases I could make because of one compromised account like a decade ago. Except steam. We trust steam, I guess.
They also know I don’t leave the state almost ever so I guess they’d shut that down as well. But I’d go to the bank and talk to the office people and they’d fix it before the trip.
My first bank would flag a transaction if I traveled 2-4 hours to the next city, because God forbid I take a damn road trip
At this point my bank would probably do the same tbh. Mostly because 2-4 hours could get me into the next state, depending on direction lol.
That’s interesting about Steam. Steam purchases used to flag my card so much, I ended up telling my bank, “If a purchase goes through Steam, IT’S ME. I don’t have kids, I don’t share my card with anyone. Just let the purchase through. It’s fine.”
I don’t know why Steam in particular kept setting off red flags for them, but damn it was frustrating that they’d lock my card every time I wanted a new game. I mean, I know I should probably not give in to the temptation so much, but my Steam library is bare bones compared to those of other people I know. I’m an adult and if I want to spend my money on games that make me happy, let me do that!
I think because I’ve bought so much on steam over the years there’s just a flag in my account somewhere! They hate other games though. They blocked me purchasing Black Desert Online and I had to go in and say “No no, that was me”
Unrelated, I just want to fist bump, fellow gamer girl!
Me when I was in Poland buying water at Zabka which I told Presidents Choice MasterCard I’ll be in Poland for a time span, and yet they still froze my entire account and cut off access for a month while their fraud team worked it out. This was my only source of payment while I was abroad (I’ve since corrected this).
Their apology was $25 in in-store points, I said “what the fuck??” They came back to me with “Great news! I’ve been given permission to give you $50 in in store credits!”. To which I responded “get fucked” and cancelled my account.
I now roll with Simplii, Amex, and Wealthsimple and have had a much better experience. Although simplii has felt pretty barebones, I might change from them.
You can prevent this by giving us all your personal information, installing our apps, and let us text you a secret code every time you want to use your card.
He should be at the register looking confused with a pissed off cashier and a line of people behind him. The fact he’s carrying away his groceries in a bag means the card worked.
This! And add in a parent who went with them to the store who’s loudly making fun of the person shopping for it and the person shopping getting angrier and angrier while trying to hide it and be kind to the store employee…
TIL there is only one grocery store in Texas.
“Grocery store in Texas”
You can just say HEB . We all know it’s HEB.
You don’t have Kroger anymore? We do up north now, so figured it was still down there.
Maybe… it definitely doesn’t have the presence it did in Florida. In Florida I would see the trucks everywhere.
Here in Texas it’s just HEB and Walmart
Florida has no Kroger stores and hasn’t in decades.
Kroger set up a couple large warehouses in Florida that they did delivery only from as some kind of test market. It was actually cheap and reliable. Unfortunately they announced a few weeks ago that they’re shutting it down in January. I suspect they were undercutting prices to build market share and weren’t making much money.
Also Kroger is absolutely in Texas, but only in the Houston/Dallas/northeast areas. Bizarrely Dallas doesn’t really have HEB (but apparently they are slowly moving in)
But yeah as someone who currently lives in Florida but grew up in Texas I miss HEB. Publix doesn’t come close.
I only know about Kroger because I dated a girl who was a bus driver. Kroger was doing alot of head hunting.i saw a few trucks as well.
As for harvill produce I got a tattoo on my chest of a harvil girl lol blank harvil was a great girl just happened at the wrong time. Twice.
Only in Dallas and Houston areas.
Yes we have it, yes it sucks shit
I feel this is based off multiple true stories
This happened to me just last week! I just got a new apartment and had just paid my first month’s rent and my security deposit. Then the next day, I went to get some supplies for my new place. Card declined.
Tried again. Card declined.
Called the number on my card. It was “after hours” and the person picking up the phone couldn’t do a damn thing for me. They suggested I’d hit a “spending limit,” but they couldn’t tell me for certain, couldn’t tell me how much that limit was, and couldn’t make my card usable again. Absolutely pointless, why even answer the phone?
Moments after, I got a call from the automated “fraud alert” service. But it was useless too, as it glitched out (made an annoying sound and didn’t respond to anything I said), then hung up on me.
Thank goodness, I was able to simply call that fraud alert number back, verify recent transactions, and my card became usable again. (I was worried it’d be one of those lines that calls you, but that you can’t call back.)
I get that my credit union is trying to protect me, but damn. At least make it so the people answering the number on the card can DO something to help!
