[Wife placed online purchase; card was declined.]
Me: Okay, I called the credit card company. They’ve removed the hold.
Sarah: But why did they put the hold on it instead of letting me shop?
Me: The customer service rep doesn’t know anything about that. It’s some crazy algorithm that some mathematicians developed for them…
Sarah (indignantly): What? You’re blaming math?
Me: No, I —
Sarah: “Math is hard, let’s go shopping” — oh wait, I can’t!
The maths’ revenge…you left them, Sarah, and soon the algorithms will all have turned on you…
One of the ways I stay out of credit card debt is by remembering how many times I got a hold put on my card for stuff like shopping online and then buying gas. Why? Because buying something in Maryland AND New York within 20 minutes is IMPOSSIBLE. That usually puts me into a blind rage until I pass out.
After I wake up, I just put it on my debit card.
#Debit4Eva #CreditUnionLife
I wonder how the algorithm scores having a “CreditUnionLife” tattoo on your forearm?
Clearly you need to do MORE shopping so that the algorithm is used to your shopping habits.
Basically every time I’ve put a very large transaction on my credit card — like, the four-figure payments to Orson when we were planning our wedding, or the day I bought an entire new work wardrobe at Macy’s — I’ve had to call in and tell them that, no, really, it’s me making that charge. And yet their system FAILED to catch a small charge to my (since-cancelled) card at a Wal-Mart in Louisiana, even though I have literally never shopped at a Wal-Mart, and was last in Louisiana in 2003.
I still don’t know who stole the number, or how… 😛
My guess is that the small charge was a test run — they do a few small tranx to see if they can get away with it, to establish a pattern of buying somewhere, before ramping up the theft.
Could be. It’s probably just an arms race between the thieves and the anti-fraud algos…