Strange WalMart Credit Card Issue

[OldGuy]

DW told me her WM CC was declined at Murphy Gas last Sunday, then again on Tuesday. Then mine was declined on Wednesday.

So I called Synchrony, I think that's who handles it.

The lady I talked to went away for awhile, then came back and said they are being declined because we have not activated them.

Huh!? I explained we have had them for years, so there's nothing that had to be activated.

She went away again, and when she came back she said that new cards had been mailed, and until we receive them and activate them, we can't use our old cards.

Huh!?

I asked her to repeat it, and she did. The cards we have are no good because they have issued new cards, which we have not received.

I called WalMart customer service, and did what I had to do to actually talk to a WM person, instead of Synchony, and his reaction was Huh?!

 

[bogey21]

What they are telling you happened makes sense. They mailed you new cards and cancelled the old ones. This is not the way they should have done it. They should have waited to cancel your existing cards until after you activated the new ones...

George

 

[OldGuy]

gosh, ya think?

 

[Talent312]

We recently had a situation where CitiBank declined a charge for good reason...
It was fraudulent. I dunno what got their attention, but they asked us about it.
Once we confirmed it was bogus, they closed the account and issued new cards.
We didn't ask them to do it, they just said that's what they were doing.

 

[Luanne]

We recently had a situation where CitiBank declined a charge for good reason...
It was fraudulent. I dunno what got their attention, but they asked us about it.
Once we confirmed it was bogus, they closed the account and issued new cards.
We didn't ask them to do it, they just said that's what they were doing.

Yep, Chase does that as well. If fraud is detected, and you confirm you didn't make the charge, they will shut down your account immediately.

 

[OldGuy]

We recently had a situation where CitiBank declined a charge for good reason...
It was fraudulent. I dunno what got their attention, but they asked us about it.
Once we confirmed it was bogus, they closed the account and issued new cards.
We didn't ask them to do it, they just said that's what they were doing.

We've had that happen four times, twice the same month, with our RCI Elite Rewards MasterCard. One of them there wasn't even a suspicious transaction, just a sense there was going to be suspicious activity.

It's really inconvenient when your account is closed and they issue a new card/account number. Once it was on my way to the airport to fly to Florida when we bought our house in 2011. There were a lot of things that required a good credit card, the first of which was picking up a rental car. Every time I had to use the card, I had to call a special 800# at the CC provider, tell them what I was purchasing, where, and they would force the approval.

They overnighted a new card to me and Florida a couple days after I got there, and overnighted one to my wife, to.

 

[Luanne]

We've had that happen four times, twice the same month, with our RCI Elite Rewards MasterCard. One of them there wasn't even a suspicious transaction, just a sense there was going to be suspicious activity.

It's really inconvenient when your account is closed and they issue a new card/account number. Once it was on my way to the airport to fly to Florida when we bought our house in 2011. There were a lot of things that required a good credit card, the first of which was picking up a rental car. Every time I had to use the card, I had to call a special 800# at the CC provider, tell them what I was purchasing, where, and they would force the approval.

They overnighted a new card to me and Florida a couple days after I got there, and overnighted one to my wife, to.

The solution is simple. Carry at least two credit cards. That way if something goes wonky with one, you have a back up.

 

[moonstone]

The solution is simple. Carry at least two credit cards. That way if something goes wonky with one, you have a back up.

That's what DH & I do now. We had our 1 card frozen years ago when we were driving to Florida. We had used it for gas at home (north of Toronto), then gas and lunch in Erie PA, and when we went to use it for supper in Wytheville VA later that day it was declined. DH spent nearly 30 mins on hold waiting to talk to somebody at MasterCard. When he finally got to talk to them they said somebody was using his card in the USA! He said DUH -its me, I'm on my way to Florida by car! The woman 'unfroze it' and told us to let them know the next time we are going to travel. I did that for years until a year or so when I called I was told they have better anti theft monitoring now and I didn't need to call any more. We still carry 2 different cars just in case.

My elderly dad had a problem with his VISA earlier this year. He was making some purchases at Princess Auto (similar to Harbour Freight) in Barrie Ontario and there was quite a line up for the cashier. While he was waiting he got his credit card out of his wallet in hopes of speeding things up. He made the purchase ok but by the time he had driven the 15 or 20 minutes home VISA had phoned to say somebody was making online purchases in Europe on his card! They froze his card and couriered him a new one. Dad called the store to ask if their credit card reader had been hacked. The store manager checked all the readers and said everything seemed ok. Dad told him what had happened and said that store was the only place he had used his VISA in the last week. The manager took down his info and said he'd do some more checking. The next day the manager called dad back to say 3 other customers who made purchases around the same time as dad had the same thing happen to them. He had reviewed the surveillance video and saw a young man with a small bag holding it near the customers in line as he walked by. They figure it was a RFID (chip) reader. I bought dad some RFID sleeves for his cards as well as some for ours.


~Diane

 

[Talent312]

Carrying two different CC's is a good idea.
Even better is using different bank's CC's in case the bank is the issue.

.

 

[Aurelius]

I believe Walmart dropped Synchrony as their co brand sponsor, so I’m sure Synchrony isn’t heavily invested in service of the remaining customers...

 

[OldGuy]

Yes, Capitol One takes over in October, which makes it even stranger that Synchrony is sending out new cards now . . . and for the first time we can remember.

I did not mention Capitol One because I did not want to cloud the core issue . . . not being able to use our old cards because we haven't received the new ones yet. To compound it, all of our stuff gets forwarded from our Florida address, and all of our stuff does not always get forwarded. But that's another thread.

Also, we have some Rewards $$ and there's no way to redeem them. I chatted with Synchrony and they said they automatically get applied every month, but they don't.