I stopped into 7-Eleven today to buy a few things. I swiped my debit card and it said "declined". I tried it again. Declined. I checked my statement right there from my phone and it said I had plenty of money to make the purchase. I had also just bought a cup of coffee (medium french vanilla, cream and sugar if you ever want to buy one for me) and I seriously doubted $2.12 had drained my account. I feared my account had been compromised in some way so after handing back my purchases and slinking away in embarrassment I called my bank.
About my bank: I'd been using ING Direct for a long time. I loved their service. Even if there was no brick and mortar place for me to do stuff like deposit physical checks or whatever I never needed one, and since I use my debit card for most transactions I wasn't even put out by the occasional fee to withdraw from someone else's ATM. ING Direct got bought by Capital One and so now I have a Capital One 360 account. I thought it would be shitty because Capital One, but so far the differences have been pretty transparent
The customer service rep was really nice and I didn't even have to wait on hold for long. She looked up my info and saw the declines. Every decline gives them a code that tells them why it was declined so she was able to drill down and let me know what the problem was and fix it pretty quickly. According to her there was a suspicious transaction on my card that had caused a freeze to be put on my account. The suspicious activity was a $20 charge from Audiokite, a service that allows musicians to upload their songs and get it reviewed by x number of anonymous users. It's a pretty cool service and a valuable tool for musicians if you don't have the means/exposure to get official reviews from the press.
I totally get the need for security, and in general I'm happy that my bank is looking out for me (I mean, not actually looking out for me really but protecting their own reputation and interests, but it benefits me so I'm not going to quibble about their reasons), but the way they did this one baffles me.
First of all, Audiokite is based in the states, in New York I believe. I spent a week in the Dominican Republic and used my card to charge things and even to withdraw pesos from an ATM. At no time did they flag my account, contact me to report that my buying pattern had turned suspicious, or anything of that nature. I was in another country! Yet a transaction from a US company aroused their suspicion? What's with that?
Second, I asked the rep if they should have contacted me to let me know that they had frozen my account for suspicious activity. She said they should have, and a check of the record showed that they'd initiated an automated call to let me know. Well, in fact they did call me. Earlier this morning I received an automated call from a 1-800 number that went something along the lines of "We're contacting you about suspicious activity with your banking institution." I listened to that generic message, made from a number that did not match the one on the back of my card, and assumed it was some sort of scam or phishing expedition. I mean, you can't be too careful about that stuff and I get spam calls to my cell all the time. I told her as much and she chuckled and admitted that yeah, their calls do sound like scam calls. So...you know, would it hurt to say the name of the bank in the message, and maybe to specify to call the number on the back of your card for assistance so that you're not skeezed out by some random 800 number? Maybe?
Anyway, I got it cleared up but I went ahead and withdrew some cash because I didn't want to go back into 7-Eleven and try it again. Their eyes were so...judging.
