Dear HSBC, I Promise I'm In Norway
Listen, HSBC Fraud Department, we need to talk. We know it sounds like a joke, but Phil is actually in Norway. We're sure people call all the time and navigate your byzantine series of computer menus just to tell you hilariously absurd lies like "I'm leaving the country, here's my forwarding contact information." We're sure labeling every foreign transaction as potential fraud isn't nearly as fun as caring about the part of Phil's account notes where it says "Travel advisory: In Norway." The one joy of this endless runaround, the one nugget worth sharing, is that every time you flag a transaction, Phil gets to call you collect, and calling international collect makes a huge difference...
No menus, just one person who accepts the charges and has more power than the average customer service representative. Last time Phil called, he learned how HSBC's early warning system worked:
- Flags: Flagged transactions raise an eyebrow. The purchase is approved, but you have to call and verify that it's legitimate. This is what happens when I buy really sketchy things like rail tickets.
- Blocks: Some transactions will be blocked outright. This is what happens when I try make outrageous purchases like credits for Skype.
- Merchant Calls: For truly shady transactions, HSBC will ask the merchant to call the bank. This hasn't happened yet, but I imagine it would be accompanied by the merchant destroying my card and describing me over the phone.
Using automated systems to stop fraud is nice and good, and sometimes effective—although, it didn't stop thieves from charging over $1,600 to our HSBC credit card—but enough is enough. Phil doesn't want to call in again to verify that his latest travel-related purchase is in fact related to his travel. Stop calling him, please!
PREVIOUSLY: Don't Get Your Account Frozen When Traveling Overseas
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Just a thought, but I always use the same card to charge my trip as I do when I travel. The charge statement (on Amex) even shows my itinerary, so "they know." So you'd think the fraud checks would know at least that if I booked a trip to London for a fortnight, there's probably going to be charges showing up during that period.
HSBC has at least one branch in every country I have ever been in, there is a good chance there is on in norway. If you visit the branch and talk to someone, there is a good chance they can take care of it.
If he is worried about racking up a massive phone bill, try using Skype. All you need is a computer and a headset and you can make a really inexpensive call anywhere in the world for quite a long time ($10 when I went to china a few months ago and didnt even get close to using all of it after a month)
When your bank causes problems, you get to call them collect.
That's their punishment for bothering you during your trip. Massive phone bills.
They shut my account down (temporarily) for making a transfer when I was in Hong Kong.
I am in Brazil where I used my US BofA ATM at a local HSBC ATM only to find that my account was debited for over $800.00 when the machine failed to dispense the local currency. I contacted the HSBC branch, here in Florianopolis and was told that they recognized the error and that by law they must refund the money within 48 hours. Five days passed with no refund so I called the branch and inquired about the refund. I was told that the money was returned to BofA, but I could see that it had not been credited to my account. So I asked for some type of tracking number but the HSBC branch could provide no details, even thought they said they could see on there computer that it had been returned. If I wanted any details I would have to call there main office in Sao Paulo. I called and was told I needed to provide all the information that I had provided to the branch because the branch used a different computer system and they had no access to it. Once I gave the main office the information they told me that by law had five (5) days to respond and that I would have to wait....still waiting.....tomorrow is the 5th day...
I had my card locked while taking a car trip from SD to IN. The charges included gas and food in places along the way through MN, WI and IL. Yet they waited until I was in Indianapolis for two days before they locked my card. They really need to come up with a smarter fraud system.
WAMU did this to me and ruined a 2 month trip to Southern Europe.
They blocked my card every three days like clockwork. Even though I had called before I left, even after explaining each time that I was in Europe. It was maddening.
The worst was in Naples where the operators didn't know enough English to understand that there was a 30 second delay of dead air before the collect call was accepted. So they would hang up. I finally had to panhandle enough change to buy a phone card and then was transfered around for 20 minutes until the card ran out. This repeated three times and by the time I finally got things straightened out I was ready to kill someone.
I'm headed to Prague for a week and have opened bank accounts at Wells Fargo and BofA with enough cash to survive in each. This way when I get shut down, I can just go to the next card.
@absentmindedjwc: I don't know about HSBC specifically, but a lot of multi-national banks are only loosely affiliated with their overseas branches. For example, MNBA America (before it was taken over by BofA) and MBNA UK - I couldn't do anything with my MBNA America account in the United Kingdom. They wouldn't even acknowledge being related.
I have had a similar experience with ING Direct, also.
BoA rejected a large charge which I placed using my credit card I had with them. They did this despite my having previously called them and specifically authorizing it, down to the penny.
The worst part? It was for my then-girlfriend-now-wife's engagement ring, which I was buying just in time for it to arrive and me to take it and drive to her town to propose to her. I damn near had to reschedule a lot of sneaky proposal-related activities, and was thoroughly pissed.
Furthermore, when it finally did arrive after the second time I ordered it, the Fedex guy accidentally dropped the box when he was getting in and out of the truck looking for my office, which he could not find. If I hadn't sprinted out to his truck like Percy Harvin when I saw the truck on the curb, the little box rattling around in the leaves would have gotten washed into a storm drain and never discovered. I probably should have kept it and let it be "lost in shipping" but I am basically an ethical person...dang it.
My MSBC credit card rejects any and all payments to the Playstation Network, for some odd reason.
I've received the calls about "highly suspicious attempts" on my account, acknowledged I was just trying to buy some Rock Band songs, and still aren't able to use it.
Oh well, I just use my debit card instead.
Suggestion;
From now on anyone traveling call the executive offices of their card issuer and inform them that after seeing so many people have problems with informing lower level people of the card issuer of their travel plans and still having their cards blocked that you want assurances that you will not have problems.
Of course get a name and a number and email so that you have someone to thank upon your return or someone to rip a new one.
@Ronin-Democrat: I'm not sure this matters. I have been told by several bank/CC people that the system is programmed to flag certain transactions (foreign, $$$), which then *might* get reviewed by a human. So yes, if you do get the human review and the human reads your notes, then you're saved. But sometimes cards are shut down automatically without human intervention, and I don't think there's much to do to stop this. The only alternative would be if there's a way to completely shut down the flagging on a certain account, but I doubt they'd take this risk.
(I had this conversation after having a small purchase from a major retailer declined, and was told it might happen again no matter what I did.)
My junior year in college I spent the year abroad. I notified my banks beforehand, and didn't have a problem until three months in, when I went to withdraw some cash from an ATM, and realized my account was frozen. I didn't know what was worse - the fact that they locked out my card without ANY notice even though they had been warned I was abroad, or the fact that, if they weren't aware I was out of the country, it took them three months to catch on to the fact that my transactions were taking place halfway across the world. At any rate, this happened to a bunch of my friends at one point or another, so I'm assuming this must be pretty common.
US Bank has two separate systems for fraud detection.
1) A series of transactions look strange, such as for oddly high/low amounts, international, multiple states/countries. This flags the card for a person to review it and they may or may not suspend it (based on notes such as "going to Mexico"). Suspending the card stops all new transactions including PIN/ATM based.
2) Real Time Declines (internally named after a bird), this declines Visa/Credit based transactions that don't "fit" the card holders patterns. This system is a bitch to try and get around for anyone and shows no mercy and can not be fully disabled. This system also has no real human review so notes are irrelevant to it, this is because it declines the transaction when its sent to be approved, something that happens in a matter of seconds. Falcon does not disable/suspend the card and it may work at other merchants.
It is not normally triggered because of international transactions but for Unusual transactions. For example someone who normally uses there debit card for very small purchases and after years of use tries to buy a $900 TV from BestBuy will most likely be declined because it says "99.9% of her transactions are for under $100, DECLINE!". Another more common one is going to multiple stores of the same "type" like Gas Stations, it says "They just went to Chevron, why in the hell would they need to go to Shell 5 minutes later? Decline!"
Strangely, people spend differently when they are traveling so it tends to be much more of a hassle but we don't currently have a way to turn it off.
American Express once blocked my card while I was traveling for a series of suspicious charges in Mexico. Only the charges were in Albuquerque, NEW Mexico.
Well, this actually makes perfect sense. I worked for a credit card processor and one of our customers was HSBC. I believe that the reason for that is that notification that the customer might be traveling abroad comes in the batch files. Sometimes the files get processed, sometimes not so much. Then there is another fraud application that is running in the background - it is proprietary and nobody really knows how it works. So it's a classical situation when nobody knows what actually denied the transaction until the customer calls the bank and tells them about situation. After that bank representatives contact the processors help desk and that's where it usually gets fixed, however more bizarre stuff happens…
What good would the automated fraud prevention system be if it didn't automatically ignore human account notes?
@eric4ok: Do you live in or near New Mexico? You don't have to be in a foreign country for a transaction to be statistically improbable.
For example, Discover Card kept calling me and sending new cards because I wasn't using my card. (In fact, I had never used it except for a 0% balance transfer offer.) One day I gave in and started using it. The next day I learned that listening to their pleas to use their card can be flagged as suspicious.
I have a Visa card with my local credit union in Oregon, but I now live in Japan. Before moving here 2 years ago, I was concerned about them de-activating my card. I called my CU and they said something like "it's up to Visa". I asked if they could put something on my account like "travel to Japan" or something like that, they essentially said no, and it would be a crap shoot whether or not Visa chose to de-activate. Luckily it hasn't happened (yet), still knocking on wood...
The exact same thing happened to me when I was on interstate holidays with bendigo bank ([www.bendigobank.com.au]). On the first day of my holidays the Bank cancelled my Visa Debit Card and on the following day cancelled my Visa Credit Card stating that the cards were being fraudulently used.
I only found out after a my Debit Card was declined at a Restaurant. I was never contacted by the bank or visa and told that the cards had been cancelled. It was after about four hours of backwards and forwards that I had been told the cards were flagged as stolen.
The worst part was the Bank told me it would take between 3-6 days for the cards to be reactivated since Visa had also filed a police report.
That's ok, atleast you have your card.
I applied for a Best Buy Credit Card to get a sweet deal on a new washer and dryer, and well, it's been two months, and I havn't gotten my card yet. Dispite them telling me they'e mailed it out... twice.
Both time's I've talked to senoir customer service, they've also extended my first bill due date, but I'm about to ask for money off my bill, because without my card, I can't pay my bill off due to them not allowing payment in stores.
Ugh.
Oh, I know this system by heart, it actually made me lose my 8 year old debit card number (one I knew by heart, oh how I'll miss you sweet easy card). I made several purchases for christmas across town at several Gamestops and when I went to make the last one. Declined.
Oh, by the way, did we mention that your card has also been deactivated and you have to get a new one? Thanks!
Unfortunately in my experience you cannot go into a branch of a bank in another country with some banks - this happened with Citibank I believe (wifes account so I may have the wrong bank), but we could not make changes in a different country as they were technically different companies falling under the same corporation without interoperable computer systems.
Not saying this will be the case fro HSBC, but it may be an issue.
@weave: This doesn't always work. The automated system knows it was a charge to an airline, it doesn't know your destination. And it won't help if you travel from one country to another during your trip. It's a pain in the rear. I usually call twice on each card. You'd be surprised at the number of times that they don't mention a previous note with the second call. My theory is that you are calling a standard grindhouse call center where each employee is tracked on the number of calls and how quickly they are handled. Some of them make their numbers a little better by not typing the note into their computer. Or they mistype the date or the country and the automated system does not recognize it.
Re - Merchant Calls.
This sounds like what's known in the UK as a "Referral". Basically, the merchant (i.e. the store) calls HSBC's authorisation phone line, provides the merchant number, card number, transaction amount and so forth, and you get one of four things:
- An authorisation code, read out by the machine
- An agent on the line asking you yes/no questions about the card, ultimately telling you to fill out a Card Retained Form and sending the card to HSBC for "processing". Sometimes entails the cashier at the store getting a small reward, e.g. if the card was fraudulent. More about this below...
- Same as the last one, but you get an auth code at the end of it
- Same again, but you get the words "the transaction has been declined". Meaning you give the customer their card back and tell them to whine at their bank.
I won't go into the wonderful quality of the Chinese and Russian fake Visa and Mastercard credit cards I've seen in my tenure in the retail world...
BoA did this to me when I DEPLOYED to KUWAIT for the USAF. PS: That was my job: purchase things for the bases--toiletries, office equipment and furniture, bedding, you name it, I bought it.
They put a hold on my card (The card specifically provided to me for my DEPLOYMENT) which had NO SPENDING LIMIT, because I made some purchases on-line, and then went downtown to get some comforters.
But. Since I was IN KUWAIT, they couldn't contact me. So they left it frozen. So I was useless until I figured out what happened, called them, and straightened it out.
That was the decided factor for me to the questions: BoA or not?
Does anyone besides me think it's outrageous that one should have to inform their bank where they will be when going on a trip?
Years ago, Chase started this BS with flagging me any time I traveled outside of my local area. I bitched and moaned and screamed and finally got someone who actually had some authority and said "Look, if the chairman of Chase had a son or daughter, I guarantee their card would not be blocked" and the person was stupid enough to say "Yes, that's true, we just suspend the fraud screening in those cases." And I said "Good, that's what I want." After a bit more bitching, apparently that was (at least at that time) possible to do. The "suspend Strategy 51" note on my account ("Strategy 51" apparently being the "annoy the f*ck out of the customer by putting a hold on his account constantly) worked and for many years, I never had any further issues with fraud screening.
I'm sure such things are still possible, but the card issuers have made it nearly impossible to get to anyone with a brain who can authorize this sort of thing.
Feeding the beast on your travel habits to get even more junk mail....