On Jul 22, 3:43*pm, Lobster wrote:
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:06:58 -0700 (PDT), Man at B&Q wrote:

It's an automated system with no intelligence applied. My card was
stopped when I made a purchase approaching £1000 from an on-line
supplier who I've used many times in the past but usually for smaller
amounts.

I've had similar online supplier supllier makes a low value "test"
transaction to check the card details then a few seconds later puts
through the main amount. Trouble is the test transaction orginates in
one country and the main one somewhere else... *System spots the
apparent hyper-lightspeed movement of the card and blocks the main
transaction.

Getting the block removed is normally fairly painless, ring 'em up,
tell them the value and with who the last couple transactions where
with and maybe which supermarket and its location you use a lot and
that's it.

Bit of a bugger if you happen to be on the other side of the world with
no mobile phone coverage, as happened to me once. *Ended up in a
payphone shovelling in change as fast as I could while navigating
through the bank's menu system. Cost a small fortune as I recall. *And
that was despite notifying the cc company in advance of my unusual
destination in case that caused them to block my card.

I always take more than one card, from different providers.

MBQ