Important Information About Your Credit Card

I'm so jet lagged, I totally forgot to mention something that took almost two hours of our day today. We had been window shopping all over Akiba, comparing prices and availability of the PS Vita and some games for it. We had purchased several books at Shosen using our credit card, since we didn't bring all that much cash with us this time. We settled on a great little store called Lamutara (no idea what it means) to buy our stuff, as they were the cheapest and had the games we wanted.

Well, it turns out there's been an awful lot of credit card fraud since Christmas, and so Visa has been extra vigilant. What that means is that they flag accounts for all sorts of things, such as making purchases in Japan after using that very card to GET TWO PLANE TICKETS TO JAPAN AND BOOK A HOTEL IN JAPAN. Very suspicious, I'm sure you'll agree. Well, needless to say (yet I'm still saying it), when we went to pay for our shiny new, expensive toys, our card was denied. See, flagging your card for fraud means they just cut you off and make you call them in order to use your card again.

Now, in the States, that's not a big deal. You step out of line, whip out your cell phone, call the 800 number on the back of your card, answer a few security questions and five minutes later your card is fine and you are walking out of the store. What happens, however, when you are in a foreign country is as follows:

1) You ask the clerk where the nearest pay phone is, since an international plan on AT&T is $99 a month extra, and as such you do not HAVE said international plan. The clerk, being a Japanese man in his early thirties, has never in his life used a pay phone and barely knows what one looks like. He says he has no idea where one is. You tell him you are going to look for one and step outside....and literally almost run into the pay phones directly in front of the store.

2) You spend almost ten minutes trying to figure out how to use a pay phone in Japan to call the number on the denied receipt (the clerk doesn't even know what one looks like, so he's probably no help at all), only to finally succeed....and find out this number only handles JAPANESE Visa cards.

3) You spend almost TWENTY minutes trying to figure out how to make an international collect call from a pay phone in Japan to the US, only to finally give up, turn on international calling on your wife's cell phone and pay Lord knows how much (we'll find out with out next bill. I don't even want to look) to call NOT an 800 number (can't call an 800 number internationally) to contact Visa to have them remove the fraud flag. You breath a sigh of relief and head back into the store.

4) The clerk tries again to run your card and it is denied again. Now, slightly irritated, you call Visa again with your international roaming charges, only to be PUT ON HOLD while this guy gets his supervisor.

5) The supervisor is very helpful, especially when she realizes you are actually in Japan (that detail managed to not get transmitted to her) and explains that the hold on your card is not removed immediately, as the first woman told you, but after 24 hours. She then overrides the hold so you can use your card. She stays on the line with you while the clerk tries two more times and gets denied two more times. She then says it's not her fault, and it's all their fault, but nicely, and suggests we have the clerk clear the cache from his machine or call his vendor and can't get off the phone fast enough.

6) Pondering exactly how to explain in Japanese to the clerk that he should try clearing the cache on his cash register or work this out with his vendor, you communicate to him that your credit card company says everything is fine and there is a problem here in Japan. He understands that, and thankfully offers to call his company.

7) After about ten minutes on the phone with HIS credit card company, you see him taking his cash register apart and, apparently, resetting the system. He then runs the card through successfully, and we are on our way, only 90 minutes later with our shiny new toys, a working credit card and a ridiculous cell phone bill.

Moral of the story: If you ever travel overseas, call your credit card company. Tell them where you are going, when you are going, how long you are going for and what you plan on using your card for when you are there.

Credit card companies are battling a lot of fraud, and really don't care how much of an inconvenience arbitrarily blocking your account will have. I don't blame them much, honestly, though I do wish that an iota of common sense and/or actual human intelligence would be used when determining if fraud flags are false positives BEFORE blocking a card. This is the third time in the last eight months this has happened to me. Twice now I've been in LA for gigs, bought the plane tickets, reserved a car, actually rented the car, drove around all weekend, used the same card for gas and food all over Southern CA, then on Sunday morning when putting gas in the rental car right before returning it, my card gets flagged and I need to call in. I understand they have to protect their money and sympathize to a large degree, but the lack of communication and shifting the burden of proof to the customer at an arbitrary time and place which will ALWAYS be inconvenient to the customer is just poor service.