I've done a fair bit of traveling in the past few years, and it seems that even if I call my bank to let them know I'm going to be abroad, if I try to use my card overseas my account is likely to be flagged and I have to call them to get it sorted out. I guess I'd rather have too much protection than too little, but it can be a bit of an annoyance. It's never caused me any serious headaches, but I wonder if there's anyone here who's had a similar experience? Is your bank over-protective?
The one time I decided to use my card overseas, it actually got flagged for suspicious and abnormal behaviour. In my case, it was a pain to sort out and I ended up having to use a different form of payment for the rest of my travels. Since then, I have always got a travel card which I can put money onto for free and then use at any ATM.
I get flagged almost every time. This is a fixed pretty quickly just by calling the bank and letting them know I'll be going out of town. Chase has a great fraud protection service and they are very quick to flag any transaction they suspect is not you.
Mine only got flagged once so far, but ive only had it since august. I was buying a new video card, about $300, and the Discover texted me, email me, called and threw up a big alert on my login to let me know they suspected something. It was nice to know if something goes down, theyre gonna try their damndest to get ahold of me. Oddly i used it twice in the carribean with no hiccups. My logic is they "followed" my transactions down to south carolina, to charleston, to the carnival cruise parking fee thing and rationalized that i must be on a cruise.
My account was flagged while I was at a convention in Indiana. I was at a teacher's convention in my home state. There were many vendors with different products to purchase. I used my card twice. The next time I tried to use it, it wouldn't go through. I guess the bank tried to call me at home. They were showing different stores or vendors' names from all over the country in a short time span. One business was from California, another from Wyoming, and other from Indiana. Well, of course, I wasn't home. I was out of town trying to buy stuff. The whole weekend my card was blocked. I am glad the bank was looking out for me, but I was angry I couldn't buy any teaching materials.
