So I received my PCR card yesterday and I activated it. I made 2 amazon purchases right off the bat to test the waters... Worked fine. Couple of hours later I stop at a local gas station, attempt to use contactless payment, and embarrassingly enough get declined, reattempt and declined again. End up paying with another card. Later on in the night, I use my new card for Uber Eats, but I use it off my Apple Pay, which I had done after activation. Worked fine.
This morning I get a 7 am text message asking to verify all 5 purchases. I don't reply since I wanted to get some clarity on the decline purchase. About an hour later I get the fraud automated line call, going line by line to verify each purchase. It stated the gas station purchase was declined. After clearing the purchases it goes on to state, "retry the declined purchase and it will work."
Kind of a massive delay of 9 hours. Is this the norm with this card? Has anyone else experience this? I'm kind of annoyed, I've been looking forward to having this as my daily driver and I'm dealing with this nonsense. Hoping its an isolated incident, cause I can accept the fraud detection but this was a 10 dollar purchase, with contactless payment. Then the text to green light the purchase is on a 9 hour delay.
Weird, I used mine on a 12 state road trip and never got declined once. I thought for sure I'd get flagged at least once.
All the purchases were less than $100..
$40,$22,$11,$95,$10. That coupled with the delay was what irked me. Nothing that seems flagrant, plus the denial then approvals afterwards. Then the early morning wake up text and call.
I'm hoping it was just a fluke...
@Anonymous wrote:One day a few years ago I had to pay a parking meter every 60 minutes(something for work that I had no choice on), I don't know how but the PCR was the only card I had on me, but it was flagged EVERY SINGLE TIME! I had to call and go through the same exact thing 8 times that day lol.
The very first time they called me while I was on hold calling them.....
But that was the only time(9 times lol) it's ever happened. I've since used other parking meters, traveled through states and different countries making purchases in the same day in two countries and never had one issue other than that meter.
I don't know what it was about that specific parking meter that they didn't like, and each transaction was only like $1 or maybe less.
Seems isolated enough. Used it today... No issues... ::fingers crossed::
@CreditMagic7 wrote:Annoying yes to say the least but i had that happen ONCE before with a Capital One Venture card.
You should just call them DIRECTLY and i'm sure they will iron out the gap you experienced and they have levers to prevent a recurrence.
That way it should be clear sailing ahead as your main daily driver minus the stumble you ran into.
I'm going to try again before I make the call... Hopefully I dont have to make the call....
Frustrating when false alarms happen; hopefully it was isolated. I used my PCR pretty heavily in Canada when I first got it without issue and IIRC I used Defender to take out cash (no fees and I would rather eat the tiny interest for a few days than risk my ATM card being skimmed) in the Bahamas and have never had a fraud alert with either PenFed card.
@K-in-Boston wrote:Frustrating when false alarms happen; hopefully it was isolated. I used my PCR pretty heavily in Canada when I first got it without issue and IIRC I used Defender to take out cash (no fees and I would rather eat the tiny interest for a few days than risk my ATM card being skimmed) in the Bahamas and have never had a fraud alert with either PenFed card.
That's the experience I'm hoping to have. Things that would have made it better:
1. Had they send the text immediately to have my purchase approved.
2. Might as well have declined later purchases if they assumed fraud, what kind of protection is that?
3. If fraud was contactless, which it was. Shut down card cause that is a card compromise not a number compromise.
And finally,
4. Don't text and call me 8-9 hours later at odd hours, telling me that this call is to not have card deactivated.
If you're going to use the fraud protection route, let's not do it 50%, I mean is that really protection? If the fraud algorithm is in place then shut it down entirely and contact me immediately for corrective action. That's my rant and sticking to it 😂😂😂