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While on vacation recently, my mother treated me to lunch at a Tex-Mex (Texas Mexican) restaurant. At the end of the meal, she gave the waiter her credit card and then shared with me recently my sister treated her to lunch and credit card was declined. The waiter was very nice about it and stated it in a most understanding way. My mother had to then give the waiter her own CC to pay for the meal.
OMG, that would be the most embarrassing thing for me!! I can imagine this happening to someone who takes client or potential customers out to dinner as a part of obtaining their business in the future, and the CC declines. Because my credit has been shaky for a number of years as has my finances, for that reason, I never use a CC in a restaurant unless at least 2x the amount available credit. I primarily use cash for most dining out just to be safe.
That was so nice that the waiter didn't attempt to embarrass my sister or speak loudly "SORRY, THIS CARD WAS DECLINED!" Is this generally how most waitstaff are when dealing with declined CC? Has this happened to you and if so how did you handle it? I don't think they allow customers in the kitchen to wash dishes in order to pay off the bill anymore.
When I was a server in a fine dining restaurant a card being declined wasn't a rare occurrence at all- I never for a moment thought that the customer was in dire financial straights; a card could be denied for any number of reasons, many not having anything to do with the financial viability of the client. I just went back to the table and simply quietly would ask if the customer might have a different card as this card isn't going through. Inevitably they always did or were able to come up with the cash. It's not that big of a deal.
id imagine most people would be nice about it. It happens to everyone and obviously it can be embarrasing when it does. Ive had it happen due to machine error. what can you do.
Happened to me recently and has nothing to do with financial reasons. Purchased something at Target, and then realized we needed something else and checked out again 5 minutes later. It was denied and I used another card. Five minutes later I got a text alert from my bank asking me to confirm whether I'd attempted a second purchase at Target. Annoying, but the credit card was trying to protect our account since ringing up twice at the same place in a row is unusual.
I just bought some clothes at Lands End -- and never looked at the emails they sent. When the clothing didn't arrive -- I discovered my card had been declined. I called, and explained the card they had on file was the old number of the same card I had now -- they keep catching mysterious transactions or keep getting hacked and change the numbers to prevent fraud.
She understood -- in reality, this sort of thing happens all the time. I used to work retail. We didn't care.
Credit cards get declined for all sorts of reasons. I used to have my company-issued card declined periodically. I completely spaced paying a bill for one of my own cards one month. I have had cards shut off temporarily, for using them at places that must have triggered some type of fraud alert because the POS terminals went through a payment processor 2000 miles away. I had a card shut off after the Target data breach last year. In that case, I got a letter that said your old card will still work--but didn't say for how long. None of these things are related to insolvency.
Of course, some people run cards to the limit and are probably declined on a routine basis. In that case, one should probably not trust that a credit card is going to be usable, and carry some extra cash, or a different card.
my first time traveling internationally i had all my ATM cards denied. that was a learning experience.
This was around 1997 and I was on a work-related tour. When we got to Los Angeles, I was very low on cash so I went inside UCLA to use the ATM, at that time, in some type of student union building. My checking account balance (credit union) was around $3,000. The machine gave me the message that the card was declined. I assumed that maybe I'd asked for too much money at one time, so I requested $200. When I was declined again, I went to the other ATM next to it and requested $100. I got the same declined message the previous ATM had given me.
A coworker then loaned me $50 until the next business day when I could contact my credit union - our next stop would be in Arizona by that time and this was before cell phones. I had to use a pay phone somewhere in AZ to try and clear up this business matter.
Turns out my account had plenty of money. I told the customer service person what happened and how I'd tried at least three times on two or three different ATMs a UCLA. She said she could see via her computer record where I'd used an ATM (three times) and that the records showed that the machine had dispensed the money each time I made the request, a total of $600. What, that is a lie! I was stunned! How do you prove that you didn't receive the money when the ATM claims that you did? I don't remember if ATM had cameras back then. I explained to the customer service person what happened and about how I kept receiving the decline messages after each request.
The customer service person said that she would have to check into it. It took almost a week but eventually it was determined that the machine did not dispense the money that I requested. It was all cleared up but I'll never forgot that nightmare.
Years ago, a friend of ours used a credit card on a date.
The server came back to the table and cut the card up ---- right in front of my friend and his date.
Later, my friend complained to the credit card company. They claimed that they told the business to "hold the card" not to cut it up. My friend actually had money on the card but it had been accidently listed as "lost or stolen".
When I was in Germany the ATM shut down as we were taking money out. 500 Deutsch Mark
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Had that happen
