topic Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor? in SmorgasBoard

Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

Cmikul — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 04:37:58 GMT

i remember in the 90's vendors would have to call in for credit card approvals often and many times the voice on the phone would tell the vendor to confiscate the card and cut it up in front of the user.

i cut up many NationsBank cards in my day of retailing.

crazy times.....haven't seen or heard of that happening in decades

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 16:05:36 GMT

@Cmikul wrote:
i remember in the 90's vendors would have to call in for credit card approvals often and many times the voice on the phone would tell the vendor to confiscate the card and cut it up in front of the user.

i cut up many NationsBank cards in my day of retailing.

crazy times.....haven't seen or heard of that happening in decades

What are you? A cannibal Hey, modern day where they just close the account and kill the account number. Your memory is back with raised numbers and IBM Punch cards (like mine)

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 16:28:20 GMT

Wow! I thought that only happened in the movies.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

DeeBee78 — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 19:31:11 GMT

@Cmikul wrote:
i remember in the 90's vendors would have to call in for credit card approvals often and many times the voice on the phone would tell the vendor to confiscate the card and cut it up in front of the user.

i cut up many NationsBank cards in my day of retailing.

crazy times.....haven't seen or heard of that happening in decades

In 2004/2005 when I was in college, I worked at Target as a cashier. We were a really small Target that usually did 40-50k of sales on a weekday, so when someone came through my line with $5k of electronics purchases, it was quite strange.

After ringing up the sale, the guest (never call them customers at Target!) put their card into the reader (this was one of those ones that sucked up your card completely, like an ATM) and it was declined. The guest asked me to try it several times, but it wouldn't go through. Eventuially, I got a phone number and authorization code popup on my screen.

The guest was extremely anxious, and was being quite rude to me, as I was making the phone call to get the purchase authorized. The rep on the line asked if I was on a private line, to which I responded yes. She told me that the card was stolen and I should keep talking to her and pretending that we were trying to figure out why it wouldn't go through, while she was actually calling the police.

The guest realized what was going on, and abanoned a cart full of electronics, and their credit card that was still in the reader. I got to chop it into pieces, but not in front of them.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

Thomas_Thumb — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 20:52:50 GMT

@Cmikul wrote:
i remember in the 90's vendors would have to call in for credit card approvals often and many times the voice on the phone would tell the vendor to confiscate the card and cut it up in front of the user.

i cut up many NationsBank cards in my day of retailing.

crazy times.....haven't seen or heard of that happening in decades

I had a fake ID card cut up by a municipal liquor store when I was 16 - back in the 70's when legal age was 18.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Oct 2015 09:28:31 GMT

I was at Macy's recently and the card belonging to the person in front of me caused a message to pop up on the cashier's screen telling her to call the customer's card company. That was the first time I've ever seen something like that. Fortunately it was for address verification or something; I didn't stick around to find out if the customer's card ultimately got accepted or not.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 01:47:56 GMT

I've only seen it in the movies.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

eddie84 — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 01:51:08 GMT

@beautifulblaquepearl wrote:
I've only seen it in the movies.

Yup, same here.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

UncleB — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 07:58:48 GMT

Back in the 90s when I worked retail, occasionally when we would have to call one in the operator would instruct us to 'collect' the card. We weren't told to actually 'cut' the card in front of anybody, but to cut it in half and mail it to an address they provided.

Here was my take... I wasn't an employee of the credit card company, and it wasn't my job to be their agent. Further, I wasn't paid enough to deal with a customer yelling at me for refusing to return their card, so I would just give it back to the customer and say it was declined. Either way the card didn't work, so I always figured it didn't matter.

As an added data point, during that same time period I was still using one of my first credit cards, co-signed by my grandfather. Eventually the regional bank that issued the card took AA (closed my account) because my grandfather had "excessive bank cards". I had received a letter that the account was closed, but I tried it at the store where I worked to see what would happen. I expected a 'decline', but the POS said to call, so I did - acting as if I were the cashier and not the customer... the operator told me to collect the card! Until then, I assumed that always meant a card was stolen, but that's not necessarily the case.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

jsucool76 — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 09:16:59 GMT

I've never even seen it where the employee has to call up. If my card ever gets declined or doesn't go through for some reason, I've always got to get on the phone. No one does it for me :-/

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

UncleB — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 19:15:55 GMT

@jsucool76 wrote:
I've never even seen it where the employee has to call up. If my card ever gets declined or doesn't go through for some reason, I've always got to get on the phone. No one does it for me :-/

I agree, it's definitely rare these days. Actually, I've not seen it happen in person since my own retail days.

Also, it may have something to do with how stores set up thier POS systems to handle exception events. When USAA put a fraud hold on my account last year (I was grocery shopping in the middle of the night) the Kroger cashier told me my card was declined. However when I called USAA, they told me they didn't decline my card, and the message the POS should have given the cashier was for him to call. I suspect Kroger may have 'kept it simple' and programmed their registers to treat anything other than an approval as a 'decline', regardless as to what the actual message from the bank is.

Another good reason to just call yourself (rather than have a clerk call) is that you get to speak directly with the issuer to resolve the problem. Whenever a clerk calls for a MC/Visa manual auth, they don't call the bank, they call a service center that handles all MC/Visa cards. Amex and Discover are a little different since the service center is run by the issuer (usually), but it can still be cumbersome for a clerk to leave their register to go to a phone, find the 'special' phone number and merchant codes, then make the call... the entire time with a customer's card in-hand. It's just easier to let the customer call, especially now that most people have a phone in their pocket at all times.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

jsucool76 — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 19:43:39 GMT

Even easier when I use one of my more expensive cards. If. Probably get through to a rep quicker lol.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

UncleB — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 19:46:52 GMT

@jsucool76 wrote:
Even easier when I use one of my more expensive cards. If. Probably get through to a rep quicker lol.

Absolutely!

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

mitchblue — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 19:58:13 GMT

About 30 years ago I had my Jc Penny's card cut up.. My first card, $200 limit which somehow had about $300 worth of spend on it. I treated that card badly so no surprise. Good times.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 00:16:58 GMT

I miss the old days when I never worried about limits because there were no systems in place to check the cards.

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

jsucool76 — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 10:02:28 GMT

You could also spend a kajillion dollars cause they just took your card number and your credit card company didn't find out about it for a while. Lol

Re: Anyone ever had a card cut up by vendor?

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 11:58:13 GMT

Been there, done that, once a member of all those groups you noted OP.

For sure this, I remain positive until someone makes a post screaming arrogance and/or entitlement. Once I sense that I lose my filter.