Apparently he only had $80 on the card and his purchase was $150. So what did he do? Well he didn’t storm out like the customer you witnessed. Instead he asks the person over the phone to see what can be done about extending his line, right there!

I mean how over extended do people want to be these days? I understand the holidays encourage us to shop and buy but as a society we really need to change the way we buy and consume. Hence my recent following of your blog… =)

Thanks for the mention and have a great weekend!

I included a link to this on my blog:
http://mamastoolbox.blogspot.com/2009/12/groceries-and-thoughts.html

The first time was at In-N-Out Burger. We were eating in, enjoying our “gourmet” $10 meal for two , and I decided I wanted another order of fries. I got in line behind a woman who was throwing a fit. First, when the cashier asked her “Debit or credit?” she looked completely lost. “Debit?” she guessed. The card was declined.

Long story short, she stood there for several minutes arguing with the cashier about how the *cashier* needed to call the bank and how this had been happening a lot lately and how it *totally* wasn’t her fault. The cashier said “We don’t do that,” it got escalated to a manager, who pointed out that she had two cards in her hand and she should run it on the other one. “But that’s not *my* card,” she said. Eventually I guess she decided she wanted the burger more than she wanted to deal with this mess, so she charged it on her friend’s card. The total was about $4.

I was behind someone in a line in a grocery store a few days ago when she tried three cards before one worked. Two of them were debit cards.

I am left amazed by the number of people who have less than $10 in their checking account.

-Erica

And then there’s simple theft. Our neighbors had a frustrating year 2 years ago when their credit card numbers were stolen 5 times. They eventually tracked down the thefts to a single vendor but in the meantime they were constantly getting declined cards, having to setup reoccurring payments over and over etc.

You are absolutely right! That’s happen to me too!

It does seem that cards getting declined has been happening more lately while I’ve been at the store, although usually people don’t have the reaction that you’re talking about. usually people are embarrassed, shuffle through a stack of credit cards and say “try this one!”.

I actually had this happen to me last week. I was at the grocery store and was trying to pay with my visa debit card. It was declined. It was pretty embarrassing as I’ve never had this happen before, and I couldn’t imagine how my account could be at a zero balance. Last I checked there had been quite a bit of money in there.

It turned out that my card had been declined because my bank had sent me a new card with “new security features” and I hadn’t opened it yet. They just deactivated my old card on a set date. Thankfully I wasn’t on a trip or something when this happened.

So, moral of the story – people don’t always get declined because they’re broke or maxed out. sometimes they’re like me and they just have a mix-up at the bank!

My two cents,
Tony Tovar
Paid Scribe