The Man just Stuck It to Me
I was trying to book a train ticket from Cannes to London via Paris (First class, naturally) for the quite reasonable sum of €180 with my shiny new Barclaycard over the Internerweb. Since I will be travelling courtesy of SNCF, the transaction went to France.

Then my card had a bit of a mindfuck and thought it was being frauded, so the lovely computer at Barclays rang me up to check everything was spiffy. I assured the cyborg that everything was indeed spiffy, and followed his instructions to rebook, but the same thing happened, so I rang up a person in India (for 15 minutes!) to encourage him to explain himself. "Don't worry sir, you're all set, just go ahead and book your train". Awfully nice chap.

BUT OH NOES! It was by now 1209 French time, so the prices had changed. To €578. Ack. Happily, I managed to find a travel website that hadn't quite caught up, but having rung Barclols to complain, they said it was my fault, so had it not been for slow agencies I'd have been a lot poorer. Thanks to the place I keep my money, Fucking cock-jockeys and arseclowns the lot of them.
(Omnizor Spooning bits of road for breakfast., Mon 21 Jun 2010, 17:57, 3 replies)

i dont understand their "fraud" checks
i went to pay for a key or two to be cut in timpsons, it cost something like a tenner, and i spent 20 minutes on the phone (or on hold) to visa bods because the machine had a "ring for auth code" message on it.

then i go and use my card to pay for a thousand pound piece of sports equipment and it goes through in seconds. same for my camera (also a sizeable amount).

fucking loopy.
(zenmeban thinks the weather could be better, Mon 21 Jun 2010, 21:23, closed)

Barclays used to regularly block my card every month or so, because of a payment which used to go out to a French company - this despite me asking (every time I rang to get my card operational again) for them to not block the card because of this very regular and long standing transaction. I even tried pre-empting the block by ringing them the day the French payment went out to ask them not to block my card, to no avail.

The blocks went on almost every month from the time Barclays took over The Woolwich until I changed my account because of their constant ineptitude some 3 years later.
(Freakmandu, Tue 22 Jun 2010, 0:52, closed)

These things
are very hit and miss.

I moved to Brazil in 1998, but kept my UK bank account at Nat West.

Every time I tried to use my Visa card in Brazil, it was declined. This despite Natwest having my Brazilian address on their system. I used to call them at least once a week becuase of it, every time I was 'assured' it wouldn't happen again, that they had put a marker on my account saying I lived there.

Odd thing is, I eventually got fed up with it, and moved my account to Barclays. I have never had that card declined, and must have used it in 20 countries.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Tue 22 Jun 2010, 8:36, closed)