Happy Message From Credit Card Company About O'Seas Charge? Phone To Be Sure The Charge Was Accepted

Yikes! That is scary. We get our cards through our small local bank, and twice they have called us to verify overseas charges. We were grateful for the concern. And they called before rejecting the charge.

I'm surprised at the way that happened. I've occasionally gotten a similar email, maybe even identical, with the same follow-up once I emailed them back, but in each case the charge went through.

Had you informed your CC folks in advance to tell them that you were going to make a purchase in England? Both mine require that.

When setting up my trips, I turn the cards on for potential charges for a few days to a week at a time. I may do that multiple times during the planning. It's possible that a charge could be rejected if made toward the end of that period and the overseas vendor dawdled in putting it through. I've never had that happen, though.

The response you got from your CC company was definitely bizarre! It was very smart for you to follow up on something that seemed odd to say the least.

With my Capital One CC I get the same message with "please try your purchase again" at the end indicating that it did not go through. Because they are so consistent with their communication method, I know that when a charge is rejected to immediately look in my email for the 'verification" email, and complete the process for my charge to go through. Some of my reservations have gone through and some have not, kinda a hit and miss.

With my Capital One CC I get the same message with "please try your purchase again" at the end indicating that it did not go through.

I think I may have gotten that message once from Cap One, but more commonly I get the one similar to what the OP got.
Also, Cap One no longer wants you to give them a travel notice. I used to do that with them through their web site, but if you try that now you get the message that they no longer want notification. I assume if you called them they'd say the same thing.

Something a bit like this happened last summer when we traveled to Scotland. We thought we had paid, when in fact we had not, based on this type of message. Really annoying!!

Never happened, whether I inform the bank (BofA) prior or after making the charge, charges always went through or were pending, ie I received calls from the bank to confirm the charges. That was in the past. Now the charges go through.

@Lo: I didn't give the CC company a heads up to the charge because I'd already made a number of UK charges that had been approved as usual. In fact, the company had sent an earlier email declaring "We see you're planning a UK visit. No need to alert us to your dates of travel."

When I phoned the CC company, the first rep I spoke with offered no real explanation other than "it's the way the system works" and repeatedly suggested " since you're at the hotel" (!) that I just ask for the charge to be put through again while he was on the phone.

The second person I spoke with was a supervisor who was more professional but offered no explanation other than "we get a lot of hotel fraud". He explained that customer alerts to future large charges are retained for only three days. (I've had previous experiences with the CC company ignoring my alerts to large upcoming domestic charges.)

In any case, I suggested to that supervisor that the messages sent to me were misleading because the first failed to inform me the charge had been rejected and the second suggested it had been accepted. He said he would relay the "feedback" to the "digital team".