I can’t use my credit card but thieves can!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

A month ago I wrote a piece concerning my credit card, but you never saw it, because at the moment I finished writing it, the story continued in a most bizarre fashion.

So now you’re getting the final story. Not the complete story, because I’ve had to walk away. My sanity and the future of my sweet peas required me to say to the lovely woman at the Ulster Banks Complaint Department: “No thanks. Don’t bother to investigate it further, because I have to move on with my life. This could go on for ever. But thanks for the offer. Goodbye.”

Angry Punter makes funny copy for a while, but it’s a fairly boring read, so if scribbling about a consumer issue, it’s always to best to get ‘their’ side of the story. Trouble is, even though I’m armed with ridiculously good intentions, Ulster Bank kept screwing things up, even as I tried to let them have their say.

You know the way you feel when you have to tell the same story over and over again to people who work for the same company. I take that feeling of frustration, swallow it and persist. Working on the other side of these conflicts are people like you and me. Even if mistakes are due to human error, my gripe is always with the corporation, never the worker. I don’t want to jeopardise anybody’s job.

So yes, I’ve told this story often. I’ve told this story to Ulster Bank’s Charlotte, Andy, Helen, David, Pauline, Elise, Naomi, Ronald and Mary. Of those, Naomi from the Press Office shone out as a caring and, more importantly, consistent employee.

I knew when I started writing about my credit card security that I was tempting fate, but my cavalier attitude rather fancied that face-off. My problem was that my credit card kept getting declined at extremely stressful and vital moments.

Last summer I was driving to Knock Airport, on the way to my uncle’s funeral in London, when my card was declined in a petrol station. It happened twice more in the intervening months and then yet again recently.

I’m a good little punter who pays his bills on time and leaves a nice balance for the credit card company to get rich off, so there was no error at my end. Over the last two years, I’ve actually became fearful of using my credit card, because it has been declined so often.

After speaking to several Ulster Bank Fraud Department people, I know that it has nothing to do with my spending patterns. Apparently it’s all about websites, yet despite booking trips to England using secure and established sites like Hertz, Aer Lingus and Premier Inn, by the time I reach the third transaction, my credit card is declined. Nobody can explain precisely why, but I was involved several times in rhetorical conversational loops with Ulster Bank’s Fraud Department.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.