No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
I went to safeway to purchase a few boxes of donuts and my amex more rewards got declined. called in and no reps or the security team could push my transaction through... Navy fed stated that safeway might be having an issue because when I ran the transaction, navy fed said there was a blank merchant name linked to my donut purchases.... the rep said to try another terminal but i had already left. Has anyone experienced something weird like this before?
Could be nothing honestly but with the amount of skimming going on, I would just get it replaced regardless. Just my opinion
I haven't personally experienced that....
If Navy FCU is saying the merchant was blank that sounds like an acquirer issue or an issue with the AmEx-Navy interconnect. A computer overloaded temporary or minor link failure could mess up the data. Lastly you have an AmEx that was issued by a third party issuer. While this might not be uncalled for it is not as common as AmEx issued AmEx cards so the equipment might have complained about a number of parameters including transaction timeout.
For me personally, I would have taken it as "back away from the donuts and nobody gets hurt!!"
But that's just me!
These things happen sometimes... the tech isn't perfect.
A couple of years ago my USAA card was declined at Chick-Fil-A; I then tried my Quicksilver - which always works - and it declined as well.
At this point I knew it was them and not me, and I told them so. I got some side-eye from the cashier - they were busy and other people's cards were working with no issues - but she hesitantly switched to the next terminal over and entered my order again, this time my card (QS) was approved on the first attempt.
FWIW, I contacted USAA later that day and they showed no transaction attempt at all. In my case it was almost certainly that specific terminal but I've had similar situations come up before so it didn't bother me too much.
TL;DR - It happens.