Recent credit card difficulties

C

Charlie_K

Joined
Jul 16, 2012
Messages
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Earlier today I was trying to use my credit card to place an order from a company. It's a reputable company, it's been around for a while. But after placing the order the company informs me that my card has been declined. Then the Wells Fargo company calls me up and asked if I authorized the transaction they declined, before telling me they decided to decline it because I never ordered from that company before, so they concluded it was a fraudulent use of the card. Then they go on further to tell me that from now on they're going to be picking and choosing who they allow me to do business with, which facilities they're going to allow me to use my card with, and any order they find suspicious is going to be declined, then they're going to call and see if I placed the order or not, and if I did then they claim they'll un-decline it.

Has anyone else been getting subjected to this cluster of craziness lately? Is this something new that's going on with the company?
 
AR-Trvlr said:
Have you had a lot of fraudulent charges on your account?
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Not really. And the few times it's happened in the past, they've always called to verify beforehand to get confirmation, rather than deciding that they're going to unilaterally decline first and then ask questions later.

Before they've had no problems with me using my card at new businesses. Now they're telling me I can't do that anymore because something that deviates from the established customer basis is suspicious and may qualify as fraudulent.
 
It's happened to me too over the last two years.

A few times it was online purchases and two or three times at gas stations while traveling out of state.

But it wasn't the issuing bank that stopped the charge, in my case it was Visa. Apparently they're using a third party to monitor transactions.
So switching banks won't help, the credit card companies are doing this.

They told me the same thing as you, if it looks suspicious they decline it.
American Express does the same thing from time to time.

The ironic thing is that both of my credit card numbers have been stolen over the same period, but they let fraudulent charges go through.
 
They are using a third party. We had a company in my building that did this. Credit card transactions went to them for verification / authorization.

I imagine this happens periodically. As fraud increases, the verification process tightens.
 
Another situation you may want to cover in advance. If you are planning on traveling, call them to let them know, so they won't hassle you on out-of-area transactions.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Another situation you may want to cover in advance. If you are planning on traveling, call them to let them know, so they won't hassle you on out-of-area transactions.
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Wells Fargo let's you do this online now.

Recently some guy must have gotten my credit card information (probably in Disneyworld) and ordered $525 worth from www.sausagemakingsupplies.com of all places.
I wish my Wellsfargo/Visa would have called me about stuff so weird. Anyways I caught it in time and got em to fix it.
 
I'm a CPA and work with a few people who are also CFE's (certified fraud examiners). Almost all the work these associates are doing these days is consulting with the credit card companies, specifically reviewing transactions for trends that indicate fraud. The banks use this trend data to write programs that halt transactions that along with these trends. They are barred from talking with me about the work they are doing, but they can tell me that it is getting impossible for the banks to stop the fraud. The crooks have started to create "synthetic" people, they build/hijack a credit file, and start getting credit cards in the synthetic persons name. They produce a fake ID in the fake persons name, and they are almost unstoppable. It's out of control.
 
seeverscpa said:
I'm a CPA and work with a few people who are also CFE's (certified fraud examiners). Almost all the work these associates are doing these days is consulting with the credit card companies, specifically reviewing transactions for trends that indicate fraud. The banks use this trend data to write programs that halt transactions that along with these trends. They are barred from talking with me about the work they are doing, but they can tell me that it is getting impossible for the banks to stop the fraud. The crooks have started to create "synthetic" people, they build/hijack a credit file, and start getting credit cards in the synthetic persons name. They produce a fake ID in the fake persons name, and they are almost unstoppable. It's out of control.
Click to expand...
Any suggestions on how to limit exposure/damages at the individual level?
 
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