PenFed Pathfinder I can't use this card while on my Dubai (UAE) trip... any advice?

[Teslaguy]

I recently got my first PenFed CC (Pathfinder) and been trying to use my card overseas in Dubai to meet my $3k spend requirement. However; the bank keeps flagging all of my transactions overseas regardless of touchless (tap-top pay; apple pay or chip present) at any kind of merchant. I have tried grocery stores; restaurants, clothing stores.

From my pendfed online banking you can see all the declines: https://imgur.com/a/lwWfmFX 

Every time I call PenFed fraud department they all say the same thing:

- my card isn't blocked.

- the merchan transaction was flagged

- they have "reset" my travel notice and card profile

I have done this dance with them over the past 2 days and over 4 different calls to different agents. They all keep promising to try again and the issue will be fine next time but the problem remains: I cannot use my card at all overseas... the only way for me to be able to use this thing is on hotel bookings via american companies like hotels.com orbitz.com - this is a bit ridiculous.

Does anyone know if customer service can disable this security feature temporarily or anything at all that I can do to at least be able to use this card while on my vacation? I was trying to make the $3,000 spend within 90 days and that is the main reason why I applied to this card given most of my expenses were going to be hotels etc.

[GhostCredit]

I had the same problem, I locked the card... you need to get your card unlock and everything should go through.

[GZG]

weren't you also the person who had to wait forever for the card to arrive in the mail in the first place? 

If you can't get this fixed, are you willing to do spend outside of this trip for the SUB?

Consider putting together a summary of the problems, how long you've been delayed (in days), every time you've called, what the support people have been saying to you, and ask them to be reasonable in giving you additional time to meet your SUB goal.

No idea if it will work/help, but nobody can say you're not being reasonable for the crap experience you've had

[Teslaguy]

Would you mind explaining what you mean by "locked the card"?

if it's going to penfed online banking then "turn off card" then "turn on again" I tried this and it didn't work.

is this something customer service has to do? Cuz I called "fraud department" (the only 24/7 thing open over the phone and Dubai time zone differences) they claimed they locked it then made me call them back a few mins later to unlock but same thing. Transactions keep getting declined. At McDonald's kiosks the machine even says "suspected fraud" so they are returning some kind of merchant code it isn't a simple decline.

[Teslaguy]

Yes I am the same guy. This hasn't been the best experience that's for sure.

super frustrating that their fraud department can't do **bleep** to help me or do it seems.

[Teslaguy]

I decided to submit a formal complaint via https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/

After speaking with over 10 agents in the past 3 days; still my card doesn't work at all overseas.... I even asked someone from PenFed to "own up the issue and track things down until resolution" and she didn't want to do that... that just pissed me off after 2 hours on the phone being bounced between "Cardmember security" (visa) and "member services" (penfed CS). 

Let's hope this does something to help because I have tried everything. Even locking the card online then having it be declined while "locked" gives the same merchant return code 59 "Suspected Fraud" / "Do not honour"

[zerofire]

Did you properly activate the card when you got it? Did you make local transactions before going on the trip? Which interface are you using? It looks like for some reason the UAE area is not configured in an accommodating way. The biggest difference I see is that you would be needing authorization from Visa Americas instead of Visa Europe which causes delays. The answer needs to be returned in so much time. Lastly make sure that a travel advisory is properly entered in the system. If they reset those then that would probably clear all of them and you need to enter a new one still.