🏦: do you recognize a charge of zero? It was flagged as suspicious.
👱: maybe? My card was refused at some ATMs… maybe one of them created a zero value transaction for some reason?
🏦: the charge for zero follows a charge for $7xxx.xx.
👱: WTF?! I don’t care about the charge for zero. Tell me more about the 4-figure charge plz.
🏦: yeah, there was a charge for $7xxx.xx. Do you not recognize that?
👱: hell no I do not. Are you really sure there is a transaction of that magnitude? And why are you questioning me over the charge for zero when there is a crazy charge right next to it?
(lot of back and forth… me asking if she was sure… I could hardly believe what I was hearing)
🏦: since you do not recognize the transaction for $7xxx.xx, I am deactivating your card. You will get a new one.
Fuck me. I am traveling abroad and this will fuck my shit up. Then I realized after the call that the transaction amount is very close to my remaining credit. I thought surely that banker must have been misreading her screen. Called back.
🏦(Next banker): indeed there was never a transaction for $7xxx.xx. That was the value of a balance inquiry, not a transaction.
👱: ok, so you have a colleague who is struggling to understand the infosystem. Please re-activate my card.
🏦: we’re unable to do that. Yes, it’s clear the first banker you spoke to made a mistake. But the card cannot be reactivated. Sorry…
WTF. I did not even do a balance inquiry. It must have been something the ATM did on its own just to know what withdrawal amounts to offer. So then I asked why was the txn refused? Banker: we have an ATM limit of $xxx. (This figure changes with every banker I talk to. Apparently the limit is lower than what the ATM offered in the preset amounts).
Is this a software defect? If the ATM wants to know what amounts to offer me for withdrawal, then querying the bank for the balance is wrong. It should really be querying the bank for the cash withdrawal limit/availability, which is not the same as the balance or available credit.
What country are you from, and what country are you in while traveling? Systems from different regions sometimes talk to each other in really weird ways.
Also, never travel with dependence on a single card (least of all debit only).
Have cards from different systems
Yeah, overall good advice. But there are very few cards that give the same exchange rate. Most cards are 3%. I have some shitty alternate options with unknown surprises (since I never use them abroad, I have to find out do they need a travel notice… Will the AI bots be more trigger happy on fraud suspicion? Different ATM limits… different ways of treating cash back, etc) It’s a mess- Not how I want to spend my time.
Amex is much more commonly accepted than Diners Club, but Amex has the worst exchange rates.
From the US, in Europe.
If you’re traveling in Europe, I remember seeing a YouTube video accusing some banks of setting a dark pattern in the ATM to convince you to do a balance check instead of just making a withdrawal since the bank sometimes gets paid a fee for balance checks.
Once that card has been deactivated it’s useless. I feel for you. It’s crazy when anyone at a bank just does it. They have insurance, there’s no reason they can’t just wait to get clearance from the account holder. Sounds like they didn’t even pause.
Well they did answer all my questions and I seemed to have a chance to hold them back. But they kept returning to “but you don’t recognize the transaction…” Since they fed me misinfo, I was trapped. If there really had been a fraud transaction for the full amount of the credit, I would not want to be on record as saying it’s legit.
I guess it’s really a fucked up UI the bankers are using. Another banker also insisted that the huge transaction was in fact a transaction and could not be convinced otherwise. So multiple bankers are making the same mistake. But one banker pointed out: yes it looks like a transaction on our screen, but then there is a “category” of purchase. E.g. instead of something like “sporting goods”, the category is “balance inquiry”. So the UI is a piece of shit and the bankers are not trained to look at the purchase category to find that it’s not actually the kind of transaction where money moves.
The software is garbage if someone can tag a balance inquiry as “fraud” and not at least ask the operator if they are sure a balance inquiry is fraud. In principle any activity not recognized should be tagable as fraud, but there should be double checks and extra confirmations if it does not involve money movement.
Next time this happens, I will say “what is the category of the transaction”?
Being able to give you a clear description of your account is CSR 101. The first agent fucked up, and made it worse by assuming what you wanted without specifically asking you yes/no.
Training issues for sure. I’ve seen it happen plenty of times. And in the moment it can be difficult to not get confused by them making a mistake.
For the future, and this applies to most customer service interactions like that, you are in control. They are (supposed) to wait on you before doing anything. You can absolutely pause, think about what’s been said, and ask for clarification.
I really hope you’ll be alright.
