one more British gotcha

[calimac]

This is actually an Anglo-American gotcha, because it required bureaucracies in both countries to do it. This came to mind when reading a friend's account of bureaucratic woes involving her lost ATM card.

When attempting to purchase a visitor's Oyster card online - that's the electronic ticket card for London transport - I repeatedly got an error message when making the actual purchase. The message read as if the problem was with their system crashing, which is why I kept re-trying it, but eventually I followed a link to a phone number, which when I called it told me they were somebody else, not responsible for Oyster cards; but they gave me another phone number. After much expensive transAtlantic talk, they suggested I check with my bank.

I didn't see how that would help, but sure enough, it did. My card issuer had flagged that a purchase was being made in another country and blocked my card for suspicious usage. I said, "Oh" (this had happened once before with genuine fraud, and they'd reissued my card, which was a bear to deal with, since this was the card I had all my automatic payments on), "were you planning on calling me to let me know this?" Apparently the answer was, "Eventually."

It emerged - and I checked with my other card issuers and my ATM-card bank about this too, and they said the same thing - that nowadays they may block as suspicious any transactions out of country or even out of town (though they couldn't tell me how far out of town you have to go before this kicks in) unless the cardholder has previously informed them of travel plans. This puzzled me - I use my cards across the country all the time, and went to Canada four months ago with no problem - but I filed my plans with all of them. Dates; and country: UK only.

But that didn't save me, and this is the gotcha I came to tell you about. One of the things I did was drive the Dartford Crossing. This is the tunnel under the Thames at the eastern end of the M25 beltway around London. I didn't really have to take it: I was coming back to my hotel near Heathrow from Orpington, which is almost halfway around the belt, and decided to take the slightly longer route so that I could say I'd driven the entire M25.

The Dartford Crossing charges a toll, but it's electronic and with cameras, and the signs were clear: if you don't have an account, go online within 2 days, enter your license plate, and pay by credit card. So I did that, and it was declined. This time, unlike with the Oyster card, the error message was clear that it was my credit card that was the problem. Puzzled, I used another card, and it worked.

Next time I talked with B. on the phone, she told me that the first credit card's fraud department had called. Again. It turns out - get this - that though the Dartford Crossing is in England, the company that charges your credit card for the toll is in Ireland. And I hadn't filed a travel plan for Ireland. So they blocked it. My other credit card was less punctilious, it seems.

So does this mean that every time I buy books online from overseas, from now on, I'll either have to alert the credit card issuer first, or else use the other card? Apparently. In the past I've used only the first card for all online purchases, for security reasons, but until the Oyster card it was never a problem.

At least I got used to using the Oyster card and figured out how such cards work. There's a similar card for Bay Area transit, but I've never gotten one because I don't ride public transit here very often - about once a month on average, I'd guess - and because the instructions for using the cards sounded fearsomely complex. But now I feel slightly tutored. However, I read that, by the time I return to the UK, the Oyster card may have disappeared and been replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That's really ridiculously—bureaucratic? legalistic?

On the other hand, I ran into a somewhat comparable problem earlier this year, right here in Riverside. My credit card was formerly managed by First Bankcard; but this year they turned it over to my bank, which issued me a new card with a new number. And at one point I tried to use the new card and had it declined. I made some inquiries, and was eventually told that the first four digits of the card number had formerly been in a block assigned to Russian use, and some American organizations didn't consider Russian credit cards secure. I guess they weren't updated about the change, or hadn't processed the update.

I bought Guns of the Dawn from a bookstore in Belfast and had no trouble using my card, but that was a year or two ago, I think.

Ask not for who the Bridge tolls.

[pink-halen.livejournal.com]

I've had trouble on this trip. I couldn't purchase tickets for an attraction from the us. I waited until I got to the hotel and had the concierge book it and charge it to the room. That was after I had sent the bank an extensive itinerary. It made me a little skiddish but I haven't had any more trouble.

Every time I travel out of the US a create and itinerary for the bank. You sort of have to now. The Irish company was sort of an interesting twist but there is more of that coming. The Denver toll lanes were sold to an Australian Company.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Having to do this must be new, or, in my case, triggered by the case of actual foreign fraud I had recently. I've been to Canada 3 times in the last couple of years and had no trouble, and while I had not physically used a credit card out of the US other than that for a decade, I've bought books online from the UK, France, Germany, and Australia with no trouble. But I haven't tried it since my fraud case.

[ckd]

My bank once queried me on a charge (by text, literally right after it went into the system) because it was a charge from London and I was in Chicago at the time. (Which they knew.)

That was quite reasonable to check, though it was legit because I was buying my pre-support for Loncon before their unopposed site selection vote. :-)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Other half used to get this when on business over on the mainland.

He ended up having a blazing row with his bank and eventually persuaded them that his travel plans were none of their damn business!

[rwl.livejournal.com]

I make sure to alert the credit card company when I travel. All they want to know is dates of travel, not where I'm going to be, and I can do it via the keypad on the telephone.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

If it's any comfort, I find the local Bay Area Clipper card charmingly easy to manage. I don't use it often, but when I do it recharges itself when necessary out of my bank account without a hesitation.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Really? Both of my credit card issuers, and also my bank, specifically asked for countries. Though I did not get the impression that, if my trip had involved multiple foreign countries, they would have needed itemized dates for each one.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It's more than that (and I would not allow anything automatic access to my bank account). Remember that this is in the absence of any experience with any cards of this type. The instructions on when you're supposed to tag on and tag off, when you're not supposed to tag off, what tagging actually physically requires (not a trivial question: I have gobs of trouble getting credit card readers to read my credit cards properly), how bus transfers work with Clipper and which bus system does this procedure and which does that procedure, how you're supposed to keep a running tally of what your balance is (which I also found the most puzzling thing about the Oyster: some gates gave your balance and some didn't) - all these questions are either unanswered or require reading gobs of explanatory material that's hard to absorb if you don't already have experience with the topic.

Now that I have experience with the Oyster, however, I feel a little less wary of the prospect of the Clipper, and might consider getting one.