Credit DENIED!

My credit card was denied today and it was a good thing. It reassured me that the VISA does check the validity of the charges being made.

Each year I put all of the Christmas gifts we purchase on one credit card and then pay the entire bill when it comes. It eliminates the hassle of carrying a lot of cash around and we get beaucoup points towards free nights at a variety of hotels.

Over the course of the past couple days we had been doing some intense shopping and using the same card repeatedly. We were at our last stop today which was a local gas station to purchase gift cards for gas. It almost seems a shame that one would give gifts of gas but at todays prices these gift cards recieve beaucoup appreciation.

We needed to get several gas gift cards of varying amounts. The gentleman behind the counter who was apparently new to his position was reluctant to execute the transaction and called a more experience co-worker over for help. Although she new how to process the gift cards she didnt know how to do more than one at a time and apologized for that inconvenience. I think she thought we would leave after she said that be we were on a mission and weren't about to give up.

I ran my card through a 4th time with 3 more cards to go and the attendant behind the counter said it was denied. I knew very well that I had more than enough credit left on my card so I pulled out my cell phone and called the credit card company. We had gifts to buy and I wasn't giving up that easy.

As I mentioned earlier, we get hotel points towards free stays on this card. I had turned the card over and dialed the first 800 number I saw. Well that was the reservation line for the hotel line so after apologizing for dialing the wrong number I canvassed the back of the card again for the correct 800 number to customer service. I found it and dialed.

Why do you have to go through a never ending barage of computer voice driven options before you can actually speak with another human being. The first recording says to make your transaction more efficient please enter your card number. More efficient, yeah right. When you finally do get to speak to a live person they ask you for it again. After you enter your account number you requested to enter various other information and given a variety of option, none of which ask you if you want to speak to another human.

I was tired from shopping all day and I fat fingered my account number not once but twice and had to call back. I was getting a little frustrated now because I just wanted to be done with this whole process.

Finally I got through to a living, breathing human who, but of course put me on hold and transferred me to someone else. Meanwhile the line behind us was getting to be longer. Eventually I was taken off hold and things finally started to happen.

The bank card representative asked me questions about my account that only I would know. One of which was a number I had used at one point that I had no recollection of. Fortunately I was able to respond to all of her other questions with the correct answers.

Although it was quite a time consuming process once I finally was able to speak to a customer service representative I was quite impressed with all of the degree of 'fraud' protection that they went to to ensure my protection. It very well could have been someone else with my card and I could have been up a creek without a paddle. Hats off to VISA and the persuit to protect my credit today. Credit denied isn't always a bad thing.