Credit Card Idiocy

[tropicsgoddess]

Invisible Credit Card

This guy calls in stating that he applied for the hotel rewards credit card with unnamed bank and that he received a reply that he was approved for it. He then asks me if he can use the card to make a reservation to earn bonus points. I told him yes. But then the bomb dropped....he doesn't even have the card AT ALL. Yeah. So I told him that without having the card in his possession and being active, he can't use it at all (which was repeated ad nauseum) till he finally hung up. How the hell can you use a card that's not only NOT in your possession let alone active?!! Idiot.



No Room For You!

SC calls in saying that he's using a payphone outside of the hotel and was told by the front desk clerk that his card declined and can't get a room due to that. I told him that since I'm an 800 General Reservations rep, I don't have access to billing info and that he has to speak to the front desk and/or his credit card company about why it declined. SC keeps ranting and raving and even asks me if he should get the sheriff involved or a lawyer because the hotel won't give him a room for a declined credit card. I had to repeat (ad nauseum) to this moron that he has to call his credit card company and/or speak to the front desk why his card declined. Then after so many times of saying the same thing to him till I was (figuratively) blue in the face, he hung up. Not our fault if your card maxed out or has insufficient funds, bro!

[BlaqueKatt]

s of saying the same thing to him till I was (figuratively) blue in the face, he hung up. Not our fault if your card maxed out or has insufficient funds, bro!

Or like mine, won't work outside of a 50 mile radius unless they are notified that I'm traveling(fraud prevention).

[Arcus]

My card gets cut off even if I let them know I'm out of town. They are quick to call though so most of the time my cell phone is ringing before the hotel even tells me that there is a problem with my card. You'd think that a charge history of being away from my home area 2-3 days every week would stop the fraud flag.

[Heksubah]

How the hell can you use a card that's not only NOT in your possession let alone active?!!

He could be familiar with the concept of store cards and thinking along those lines. Some stores, for example Dick's Sporting Goods, offer store cards and dual cards. The store card is a credit card that can only be used in the store (and sometimes online depending on the store) and dual cards would be a Dick's Sporting Goods Mastercard... you can use it elsewhere and earn points with it at other places outside of the store too.

I say this because a lot of companies that have store cards are able to accept ID in the store to look up the card since it isn't a Visa/Mastercard and don't need the physical card itself. So maybe that was his line of thinking and he couldn't grasp the concept that in this case it wouldn't work.

[Moosenogger]

Invisible Credit Card

This guy calls in stating that he applied for the hotel rewards credit card with unnamed bank and that he received a reply that he was approved for it. He then asks me if he can use the card to make a reservation to earn bonus points. I told him yes. But then the bomb dropped....he doesn't even have the card AT ALL. Yeah. So I told him that without having the card in his possession and being active, he can't use it at all (which was repeated ad nauseum) till he finally hung up. How the hell can you use a card that's not only NOT in your possession let alone active?!! Idiot.

"Sure you can use it, sir! I'll just need you to read off the number from the card."

If you get any answer other than total silence or an embarrassed apology, the man is a moron and needs to be purged from society.

[manybellsdown]

My card gets cut off even if I let them know I'm out of town. They are quick to call though so most of the time my cell phone is ringing before the hotel even tells me that there is a problem with my card. You'd think that a charge history of being away from my home area 2-3 days every week would stop the fraud flag.

Off topic, but ... I wonder how the banks determine those things. Back in March I went on a little trip to a local island destination. A few days after I got back, I got a call from the bank that they'd locked my card for fraud ... because someone had used it in Philadelphia. 2500 miles away.

I just wondered how they determined that my island trip was legit, but that I hadn't then hopped a plane to Philly. Maybe it was the nature of the purchases - all at gas stations/convenience stores?

[sirwired]

Invisible Credit Card

This guy calls in stating that he applied for the hotel rewards credit card with unnamed bank and that he received a reply that he was approved for it. He then asks me if he can use the card to make a reservation to earn bonus points. I told him yes. But then the bomb dropped....he doesn't even have the card AT ALL. Yeah. So I told him that without having the card in his possession and being active, he can't use it at all (which was repeated ad nauseum) till he finally hung up. How the hell can you use a card that's not only NOT in your possession let alone active?!! Idiot.

In a weak defense of this SC, he may have recently gotten a store card at a dept. store or somesuch, where you can use your shiny new credit account right away; they print your account number on a receipt.

But yes, certainly, he should have accepted the fact that the hotel business doesn't work that way.

[PepperElf]

How the hell can you use a card that's not only NOT in your possession let alone active?!!

Where I worked if the application went thru & was approved the customer could use the account immediately. But only at one of our stores. Our system also lets them use the account even if they forget to bring the card in... but again only at one of our stores.

get the sheriff involved or a lawyer because the hotel won't give him a room for a declined credit card.

Yeah the cops are NOT going to force a hotel to take a declined card. Although they might give him a room for the night in their jailhouse if he abuses 911. So in a way... he might get what he wants, right?

And the lawyer... yeah. Lawyer's gonna want to be paid too. That declined credit card might not work so well...

[Fire_on_High]

I have a Sears Mastercard. Applied for it about 10 years ago when there was a very cute iMac on clearance I wanted to walk out with, since they specifically offered on the spot use. They printed out a "temp card" on receipt paper that could be scanned with their hand scanners at the register and act as a normal card for in-store purchases.

Flipside is....in spite of a purchase or two off Steam almost every month and several years of paying for 4 EQ accounts on it, a Steam purchase then a Station Cash purchase in the same week almost invariably flags me.

Ah well, at least they can manually release it before midnight, and approve/ensure it doesn't immediately reflag if you buy while still on the phone.

[Chromatix]

Off topic, but ... I wonder how the banks determine those things. Back in March I went on a little trip to a local island destination. A few days after I got back, I got a call from the bank that they'd locked my card for fraud ... because someone had used it in Philadelphia. 2500 miles away.

I just wondered how they determined that my island trip was legit, but that I hadn't then hopped a plane to Philly. Maybe it was the nature of the purchases - all at gas stations/convenience stores?

Or maybe they work out that you can't be in two places at once. If they see cardholder-present transactions 2500 miles apart within a couple of hours of each other, it's not difficult to figure out what's going on.

Also, if a transaction isn't in the cardholder's usual sort of area, it raises some suspicion which is fed into an algorithm along with other types of pattern commonly associated with fraud. For example, for a 2500 mile journey you would normally buy airline tickets (or at least bus or train tickets, or multiple fuel purchases along the route if you go by car), so if there is no such transaction pattern that's another red flag. Transactions involving easily-fenced goods or fuel are of course more red flags. Enough of those red flags at once, and the computer says no.

[bhskittykatt]

I once had a guest come in to try and use a credit card. He said he just applied for it. The card he had? It was the little cardstock "sample" card that they send out in those mail offers. I had to explain that it wasn't a real credit card, and if he had just sent in the application that they would send the real card in the mail to be activated, presuming he was approved. The guy...I don't think he understood it even after I explained it as simply as I could. He eventually just paid cash.

[PepperElf]

ooo travel flags. I forgot about those.

I use to complain about how much my bank fagged my credit card. I mean it really was annoying - every time I went on deployment to a new country they flagged it. Well kinda. When I was deployed to Europe they never said a thing... but when I got stationed in Japan and started doing port visits to China, Australia, Malaysia ... o yeah flagged each time.


Although I did stop complaining cos... one day it wasn't a false flag. My card had been compromised. They sent me a new card and even extended the deadline on challenging the charges cos the limit was 10 days and I was deployed. No way in hell would ANY mail leave my ship and get there in just 10 days.

[Kogarashi]

I just wondered how they determined that my island trip was legit, but that I hadn't then hopped a plane to Philly.

Or maybe they work out that you can't be in two places at once. If they see cardholder-present transactions 2500 miles apart within a couple of hours of each other, it's not difficult to figure out what's going on.

Interesting info, Chromatix.

I was wondering the same thing myself, actually, and in our case, about half the trips we take don't have a record of plane ticket purchases because the in-laws use air miles for us instead. But we got flagged once.

We were in Texas with the in-laws for a week (we live in the Northeast), after which we'd be going on a week-long reunion-type vacation in Hawaii. About halfway through the Texas week, we got a call from the card company asking about a transaction they'd marked fraudulent. It happened about halfway between our purchases back home and our purchases in Texas, but it was in a city we'd been in at the time. We just couldn't remember for the life of us what the purchase could be, and the bank didn't have any info for us beyond the very limited, unhelpful "pay to" information. (You know, one of those garbled things where Jenny's House of Pancakes would've been abbreviated to HP DBLSTK or whatever.) Since we couldn't remember any transaction that day at anything even remotely resembling the garbled abbreviation, we agreed that it might be fraudulent.

Of course, this meant that they needed to send us new credit cards, and this was right before we were to leave for Hawaii (we had about four days left in Texas). The phone rep said she could get the cards to us in time, and took my in-laws' address over the phone so she could have the cards overnighted. Cue three days later and still no sign of our new cards, Hubby calls the company back only to find out that somehow the zip code had been completely mixed up, so our cards had gone to a city halfway across the state. They offered to cancel those cards and overnight new new ones to us, but we were heading to the airport early the next morning and there was no way they'd arrive in time. So Hubby told them to send them via regular mail to our home address (where they'd be held at the post office thanks to a mail hold), and we'd get them after our vacation. Luckily, we still had the debit card attached to our checking account, so we weren't completely without funds in Hawaii.

I was wondering how they'd determined the one transaction was suspicious, but not the others made in Texas. Maybe we didn't trigger enough of the flags Chromatix mentioned?