On 26-Feb-12 15:44, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 13:50:33 on Sun, 26 Feb
2012, Stephen Sprunk remarked:
I use credit cards in foreign countries regularly. This was due to it
being an electrical retailer without C&P (which you would not expect in
the USA anyway), and not either the amount or the location.

Did you mean _electronics_ retailer?

No really. They sold fridges and washing machines too. Which are hardly
"electronics".

It's a blurry line. Best Buy, for instance, is classified as an
electronics retailer even though they sell home appliances. OTOH,
Wal-Mart is _not_ classified as an electronics retailer, even though
they probably sell more electronics than Best Buy, because most of their
revenue comes from other departments.

In the end, what really matters to a card processor is the chargeback
rate. Referring to correlations with vague things like "industry"
allows generalization when specifics don't really matter.

I did think about trying a different card.

It probably wouldn't have helped, unless the transaction was flagged by
the issuing bank rather than the card processor.

It must be flagged by the bank, because banks are the people you are
supposed to tell when you go abroad. I doubt they in turn pre-emptively
inform every card processor in the part of the world you are travelling to.

The card processor would know the identity and nationality of the
issuing bank, though, and may have flagged the transaction themselves.

And yet I can routinely buy things (expensive as well as cheap) in the
UK from electrical retailers, without any referral to the card company.

I don't get a "referral" to my bank at US retailers; however, they do
ask for photo ID, match it to the name on the card, closely scrutinize
my signature and compare it to _both_ my credit card and ID, and get an
imprint of the credit card--despite swiping it, which makes an imprint
unnecessary at other merchants.

It would be a "referral" if they were instructed to do that by the card
company on a transaction by transaction basis.

I'm not aware of such steps being done on a per-transaction basis, eg.
depending on the card number or payment amount.

Would they really do all that if you were buying was a $5 pack of AA
batteries?

In theory, yes; those merchants are required by their card processor to
take those steps for _all_ card transactions, and being discovered not
doing so could cause their fees to rise or their merchant account to be
closed. They'd rather annoy customers and potentially lose that one $5
sale than lose all their (much larger) card sales, which would likely
result in bankruptcy.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking