DH just had his card declined at home depot and he called me. I’m looking at the account and I can see the coffee he charged like, an hour ago, on the same card. There’s nothing after that (nor should there be) so I don’t think someone is running the card up. Also the balance is like $500 and the limit is over 10 times that, so…is there anything I’m missing that I should check? What bad thing could this be that I need to find out about, basically. He said they tried two machines?!
ETA: Oh and it wasn’t a huge amount being charged. I thought of that, like that maybe they thought it was fraud. It was like $150 at home depot which is pretty normal in the scope of our spending.
Weird quirk on their end? I’d call customer service to make sure there wasn’t some weirdness between the coffee and Home Depot. It’s probably nothing but I would feel better talking to a live human in their fraud department.
I got the sense they tried it twice back-to-back but on different machines. I ended up telling him to use debit, which is fine. But that’s a good point maybe something on their end (I hope).
You can’t always see it! I forget what can demagnetize them but some things can. SirB demagnetized like 4 cards before a store clerk told him what was going on sometimes they’ll work inside a plastic grocery bag when they’re started to fail.
Yeah, customer service for the card, specifically the fraud department (I think there’s usually an option for it in the initial “dial one to…” options. They’ll see if the transaction even pinged their system and if it did, why it was declined.
Theoretically, I feel like DH doesn’t use tap ever and he probably didn’t try. He is (weirdly) a luddite data scientist so it probably didn’t even occur to him as an option. Yes, we have had many conversations about this. Why do you ask?
Back when I was commuting, I would buy a monthly transit pass at my station every thirty days. Like clockwork. Because I commuted. At the same station. Every single time it would get flagged as fraud and I’d have to call and sort it out. (I had a second card so it wasn’t a real problem but it was very silly.)
sometimes they’ll work inside a plastic grocery bag when they’re started to fail.
(I had a second card so it wasn’t a real problem but it was very silly.)