milkman

I have had chase bank visa southwest card for 11 years and i do love the rewards.... i have so many free trips it's crazy. they are very generous in this respect.

on the other hand, i get flagged about once a month for credit fraud, making my card get DECLINED even though my limit is not even close to being reached. You would think this would be when i travel somewhere and it is not a normal purchase. quite the contrary. last month it was at the apple store which i shop at frequently. the month before that, it was at rite aid which i shop at nearly every week and the purchase was for only like $60. It was indeed embarrassing and held up a line. I called in and it asked me via computer voice to verify if the charge was legit. so at least it did not take toooo long to get my card working again.

BUT today..... was quite horrible. I was shopping at Ralph's grocery store where I shop at LEAST once a week. I had lots of people behind me in line. The clerk rang up my groceries, about $150, and then my card chase visa card was DECLINED! My cell phone had no reception in the store which made this worse. So i walked to the main customer service counter about 30 feet away to make the call. I did the normal computer automated re-verification and it said the hold was removed. BUT it was NOT. I got back in line full of annoyed customers who thought i probably had no money to pay for my groceries and AGAIN it did not work. I called back and spoke to a representative.. she was from the phillipines and was so robotic it was nuts. She kept trying to make it work and I would go back and leave the grocery store phone off the hook so i could go try the card again.

Cut 30 minutes later and it STILL would not work. THey had to keep letting other people go ahead of me and all of the employees were pretty much thinking that it was my credit problem. the lady from the philipines on the phone still kept having me have them ring it up and continued not to work. she said she was refreshing my account. after 10 times of trying and 40 minutes later she asked "do u still want to make this purchase?"! Why would I not? I had a week worth of groceries melting and i needed to get out of there. Next she asked me a series of more security questions to which I asked why she hadn't done that 30 minutes prior. She really didn't care. But even after this it still would not work. It was almost an hour 'til my card would work. By that time the clerk was gone and the manager came to ring me up but it failed for him twice. I was about to lose it.

The only thing Chase bank visa gave me was double rewards on that one purchase. I talked to a supervisor in texas if that was fair..... that i waited 1 hour, had ice cream that was ruined and hot food that i had gotten to eat that was no longer hot and all i get was double miles. she said it was indeed fair. Both of my parents have this card and my brother and sister and i am thinking about having all of us cancel this card. that might be almost a million dollars a year in lost sails for them. so that is for penny wise and pound foolish to not give me more for that incident. I wish they would contact me and offer me some compensation.... major.

hope this warning could help others. i do love the miles and pretty much JUST fly southwest so that is my dilemma.

fffresh

I had a similar thing happen with my Amazon card when I was at a gas station. No clue why because it was only a small amount of gas. You would think they would flag suspicious big charges but I guess not!! They must randomly do this with accounts because it seems to happen at the times you would least expect it.

I remember Bank of America cards claiming to have the number one approval rate on purchases a couple years back. Don't know if this is still true or not but you may want to switch to a different card if this keeps up.

Mogul of Pineapples

Was this double miles they offered only for that purchase or was it for that billing cycle, a couple billing cycles? If it was only for that purchase of $150 that means you would only get an extra $1.50 worth of miles... not worth it at all for your time. You should have told this to the supervisor. I would have asked for double miles for two billing cycles and tried that or maybe a one time bonus of 1000 miles to your account.

__________________
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Current Cards:
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robert.loehmann

Ask yourself "Are the rewards really worth it??" haha probably not!!!

I don't have the Southwest card but I think it gives you 1 pt for ever dollar spent if I'm not mistaken. That's nothing special. Maybe try a card from a different airline if this is such a problem. If you use the pts only to buy the tickets it doesn't matter whose card you use because the free tickets all cost the same amount of pts.

milkman

Had this happen AGAIN but it didn't take a half hour for the charge to be authorized this time. I don't get it with small purchases like this i'm not even someone that spends a lot at all and since I'm a cardmember 11 years it makes me wonder what is the deal that like 5%+ of charges need to have this verification thing done.

BUt no the double points were only for that purchase so it did NOT matter one way or another..... I give up like I said I like chase southwest and its rewards but honestlythis is just soooo annoying to keep having to deal with this over and over.

The worst part is it's embaressing too because you know what people are thinking when they see it happen. "he is a credit delinquent that is maxed out on his card and that's why it won't go through"! Soo embaressing because i'm the total opposite of this.

fffresh

If that keeps happening I would stop using that card and send them a written letter why you aren't using it.

I like Chase too and their rewards but what good are rewards if you can't buy stuff due to this. My card that did that was Chase card too. None of my other credit cards have ever done that.

Rajeta