Just a 47-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). I went to fill up my gas tank and was met with this reply from the little credit card screen: DENIED
Of course, my may concern was that I could still use my coupon. I hurriedly dug out my "backup" credit card and tried again. Coupon still took, so, phew! (The procedure at this gas station is to scan the coupon, and then to choose payment method. I wasn't sure if I could use it a second time, easily).
While I pumped gas I remembered that dh's gas tank was empty, we had lots of gas coupons, and he had gotten groceries this morning. He usually gets gas at Safeway and it's rare we both get gas on the same day anyway. But we get groceries and van gas at Bel Air. So obviously he had used a gas coupon while getting groceries, today.
We did the exact thing about a month ago. They lock the card because they assume you dropped it and someone else tried to use it. IT's annoying to me in this day and age that they can't seperate that we are DIFFERENT users. That our cards are different, even if the account # is the same.
I thought it was funny that their system was so blunt. DENIED. Usually they tend to word these things a little nicer, like, "CALL YOUR CREDIT CARD COMPANY."
I lost $0.56 in rewards due to bad planning (earned 1% instead of 2%). Worse, I have to go call the credit card company. Bah!
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WE always get gas coupons for spending $50 or $100 at this grocery store.
TODAY they had a promo - spend $75, get a $10 gift card. Dh saw the advertisement and planned his week around this promo. You may recall that a month or so ago he went to the store, he spent $100 like always (for best gas coupon) and their coupon printer wasn't working, so they handed him a $20 bill. He had NO IDEA WHY. IT was a similar promo. They just did cash since the "free $20" was not printing correctly. We were both stunned that we seemed to have no idea about said promo. I googled it and figured it out pretty quickly, that time. So, I am glad dh caught this one. We wondered if we missed it without the newspaper. Could be. But, this time it was advertised in the mail.
My mom also sent me a $10 "off everything at Kohls" coupon. I haven't gotten one of those in ages! She told me she got it from the Kohls ad in the paper. I told her to tell me next time so I can go buy the paper!
Denied
November 11th, 2011 at 10:29 pm
November 12th, 2011 at 08:21 pm 1321129305
November 13th, 2011 at 02:06 am 1321149980
That said, I was wrong. When I called they said they hadn't locked my account. Turns out dh had gone to a different grocery store and gas station. It was some gas station issue. In fact, the customer service person kind of laughed at me saying they don't lock cards for that. I said, "Um, you have before."
My dh had a Chase at some point they denied charges ALL THE TIME. It took quite a few incidences before I convinced him why *I* always carried a second credit card just in case. But, of course since having multiple cards it has very rarely been an issue. (That was back in like 1999).
Besides this example, the only time a credit card company has every had any fraud alert was when there actually was fraud. (In the last 10 years?) I am always kind of impressed how they seem to know. They KNOW.
November 13th, 2011 at 02:23 am 1321151030