Thursday, April 8, 2010

Too Much Security?

We are planning a trip to Europe this summer: three weeks in France and Italy. DH acquired the plane tickets for us a couple of months ago, as he had enough miles saved up to buy two of the three tickets we need. (He will already be in France for a conference, so his airfare is covered).

After spending February and March reading guidebooks, I've finally decided on an itinerary, so I started yesterday by trying to book a B&B in Paris for the end of our trip. I promptly ran into the first snag of our trip. Our credit card company declined the online transaction, so I had to call them to confirm that we were indeed trying to book a room in Paris. Then I had to wait for the owner of the B&B website to reset the queue (I couldn't resubmit the transaction until she cleared it). Second try--still declined by the credit card company. Called them again to complain, emailed the owner to reset everything, and waited a few more hours to try again. It finally went through this time.

Today, I attempted to purchase some other things online (normal purchases for me), and discovered the card had been blocked AGAIN. Third call to the credit card company in two days--the woman I spoke to this time had to call her supervisor to clear things up. It seems that I made some sort of change to my account information (I'm presuming this is related to deleting the work number they had for me that hasn't been valid for four years) that threw me back into limbo.

I appreciate their attempts to prevent fraudulent use of my credit card, but I'm annoyed that it took THREE phone calls to them to straighten it out. It should only have taken one. And, I had to make a phone call to a retailer to tell them to try my credit card again, since my order didn't go through. I hope the rest of the planning goes more smoothly.

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