Mastercard Prevents Fraud - By Blocking Me?
This weekend I was trying to buy a round trip airline ticket from San Francisco to Maine in order to spend a week with Amanda and her family. Pretty straight forward thing to do right? Pick a site (I went with Travelocity), enter some info like where from/to, dates and a whole lot of other stuff, mostly useless. Did that easily enough. Since I was trying to match Amanda’s flight info, it was even easier (not as cheap as other options but more convenient). So I’m zipping through all nice like until I get to the page where I have to pay.
At that point I pull out my handy dandy Paypal Debit Card so I could save a few bucks on this flight (from cashback) and enter my information. I check to make sure everything is accurate then click the submit button. After waiting a minute it comes back saying there was a problem with the card and to check the info or use a different card. So I check the info again, even re-entering it and try again. Same thing. Weird.
I log in to my Paypal account to check my daily limits. $3000 for purchases, $600 from my bank account. More than enough to cover the $525 plan ticket. I also see that Travelocity put a $7 authorization through on my card. Twice. Ok so it went through but was still declined. Vexing.
At this point I figure it’s time to call people since I don’t know what is going on. I start by calling Paypal. After spending about 30 minutes on the phone with them, they have come to the conclusion that Mastercard denied the transaction because it was an unusual purchase for my account. Now I normally spend anywhere from a few dollars to a couple of hundred dollars on this card. The lady said that since it was such a large amount that it was denied and all she could do was to ‘reset’ the card, whatever that means and I should try again. If it still didn’t go through then I would need to use a different card.
Whoa there nelly, let’s back up a bit. So I have all these daily limits, but I can hit them on a single transaction because I normally don’t spend that much money on one purchase?!? That is crazy. What is the point then of the daily limits? Yeah I get that it is nice someone can’t get my card then go on a shopping trip racking up tons of smaller purchases but this is me trying to use my own card for something I really want. I know this had happened before and that somehow the agent on the phone was able to let the charge go through but I guess this person didn’t know enough to do that. Fine. I’ll just have the purchase broken up into smaller charges. Whatever, minor inconvenience but worth it for the trip.
Now I try calling Travelocity. Wait isn’t too bad, pretty short in fact. But when I get someone on the phone, of course they have a thick accent and I can barely understand what the guy is saying. Fair enough, they are trying to cut down on costs to save me the most money possible. After telling the guy what happened with the website and what I want to do he starts the booking process. He asks me all the same information the website asked me, in the same order and everything. Ok so maybe their internal system looks like the public system. We go through the whole process and get to the total. He tells me the price and it is $25 higher than what was listed on the site. I ask him why its higher and he says that there is a phone ordering fee? I have to pay to order tickets over the phone because the website is limited in it’s functionality? Absurd! I tell him no, that I’m not paying that and after some haggling, he agrees to waive the fee.
We get to the payment (with a detour on seat selection which I’m not even going to get into here, but regardless they need to try out Ticketmaster’s time limited reservation [as much as I hate that, it's better than what the airlines have]), he asks me for my card info and he tries it. He gets the same error message I was telling him I got. Well yeah, thats why I was calling in, to see if they have some way around that as merchant’s usually do. He says nope, that I should use a different card. I then ask him I can break the payment up into 2 or 3 payments. He seems very confused by this and after asking around says he can’t since he is offered only one payment box.
Now at this point I’m pretty convinced that all he did was go to Travelocity and literally did the same thing I did. I’m not sure they have a separate system for their phone agents. That’s stupid. So I am through with Travelocity since I can’t buy through them.
I try Orbitz and it is pretty much the same deal. I think they are using the same site, just styled differently. I even called in and the person sounded like they have the same accent. Not cool. Same deal with them; no breaking up the payment.
To get the tickets, I had to book each part separately and wound up spending about $15 more than the original price but at that point I didn’t care anymore. I got the tickets and that’s all that mattered.
Mastercard, if you are listening, I appreciate all that you are doing to safe guard my accounts and money, but damnit, sometimes you are too good and even I can’t use my card. WTF mate?
Tags: Amanda, Mastercard, Orbitz, Paypal, Travelocity