We took our two six-year-old grandsons to an outdoor aquarium today. We paid our admissions using a credit card and we later bought two toys for them using that same card, all with no problem. However, when we were ready to take them home and went to pay the parking lot fee with that same credit card, the card was declined. What was worse was that the parking lot fee was not acceptable to be paid in cash.
My credit card was declined and my cash declined. Nice situation, wouldn't you say??
Fortunately, I had another credit card to use which was accepted for the parking lot fee, but when I got home and called the original credit card company to ask for an explanation, what I got told was astonishing.
When I made the first two transactions, the credit card had been read using one of those new chip readers. However, the parking lot booth didn't have one of those readers, it had an older stripe reader through which a credit card would be swiped. The credit card company had this loony policy and algorithm which decided that three transactions in one day where the last one was a "swipe" was some kind of signal that the card was being used fraudulently. If that third transaction had been via a chip reader too, there would have been no problem.
Please do not ask me to justify that kind of nonsense.
As I put it to the credit card company representative, I had no control over what kind of technological facilities had been provided to the parking lot attendant and I did NOT appreciate the possibility of being stranded because of some nonsensical algorithm.
The response was highly apologetic, but hollow. I was told that MY account with them, and MY account only, will henceforth be tagged and noted that there are to be no further such declinations of on-site transactions based on that algorithm. However, transactions made on-line might still be declined if card over-use is suspected.
I really don't know how to interpret that last caveat, but I suggest that you who are reading this essay check with your own credit card issuer to see if you might find yourself in the same conundrum that faced me with my young grandsons in their car seats getting hungry for supper and with Mommy and Daddy waiting for us to get them back home.
