I had to make FOUR phone calls to my bank to buy a Mac!
Fraud prevention is one thing, but Barclays have truly gone beyond this into some SERIOUS obstruction when they blocked THREE attempts by me to purchase a new Mac with MY OWN MONEY!
I'm long overdue a new Mac, my current MacBook Air is a 2018 model, and it's served me well for 5.5 years, but the track pad doesn't click anymore and i've had to use a mouse alongside for at least two years.
And the screen occasionally goes fuzzy and I've been reliably informed this is a sign that it could give out altogether any day!
But most of all it's the battery life, I now only get 30 mins and that's just not workable anymore, and it's not worth getting a batter service when I'm almost at the point of getting a new one!
Declined Transactions!
So yesterday morning I went online to purchase a new Mac, or as it turned out 'tried to purchase' is what I actually did....
I tried first on the credit card, declined, then again on my regular bank card, declined. On both occasions I'd authorised via the app but Barclays was having none of it.
I then got an automated fraud call and worked through that, then had to phone Barclays, and then Barclays fraud to get my cards cleared.
All of this took about 50 minutes to negotiate.
So I tried again later, thinking my card was now clear, FAILED again.
So FINALLY I phoned fraud again and had to have someone on the line while I tried again, and FINALLY it went through....
Within seconds I had my order confirmation from Apple, I opted to pick up in store as I was in Birmingham anyway Saturday morning, and i just fancied a bit of a mooch around too.
Mac in the backpack, of course, I wasn't about to walk around town with almost £2K of computer on display in a fancy apple bag, that's just stupid.
Fucking banks..
That's about it.. I get fraud prevention honestly, but it's another reminder that IT'S NOT YOUR MONEY if it's in a bank.
The thing is too, I don't understand how else I'm supposed to make these large occasional purchases other than via card payment really.
It sort of made me long for a nice P2P crypto payment - in the shop, scan the barcode, transfer the BTC or whatever, that would have been so much easier.
It reminds me that had I turned up and bought the machine in person, I may just have had a wasted trip, or at the very least 30 minutes standing around with the poor member of sales staff waiting while I spent 10 minutes on hold to Barclays customer service.
It's just another reminder that one doesn't one TOO much money in regular financial services, everyone should have at least something in crypto...
Postscript...
I did eventually get said Mac!
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
Enjoy the new computer. I don't get too many issues spending my money, but when I tried to do the final payment on our solar panels the bank made me jump through hoops. I had to call Octopus to confirm the details of where I was sending the money. I was fairly confident anyway as I'd been speaking to the same lady all through the process. It is possible for emails to get hacked to change bank details, but I doubted that would happen for this. It was a fair chunk of change though, so best to be sure.
£2k may not be considered a huge sum these days and I would think Apple are trusted, but then I have heard of stolen cards being used to buy a lot of stuff from them that can be easily sold on at a discount.
I'm glad I'm not the only one, I think?!?
May you use this one longer! Normally a bank should warn you if the amount which would be charged is high.
Hah! Terrible experience, wow, I would have been mad!
So first of all, why didn't you use your Crypto.com card ? I've had a Ruby one (350€ in CRO staked for 6 months), I reviewed it here (bilingual post in FR and EN). I was so satisfied with it that I've upgraded to the next tier and got a Jade card (3500€ in CRO staked for 6 months). I reviewed this one here.
In the comments, you wrote that you have the lower tier (Midnight Blue) yourself. I use my banks app to do an instant transfer of money from the bank to the Crypto.com account, then I load the card and I spend with ease, all within 3 minutes (SEPA Instant transfers).
But I do that because of the cashback, not because my Luxembourg bank is as difficult with my money as Barclays. The other day I used a normal VISA card issued by my Luxembourg bank to buy an Antminer S19k+ on Amazon (2K€) and it went perfectly well, no problem for the bank. So perhaps consider moving to Luxembourg ? 😁
Ohh OK that's something I didn't even consider, you know! Didn't even occur to me, I wasn't aware the CRO staking was so relatively cheap! I might just have to look into that!
Congratulations on your new Mac. My MacBook Air is 2017, but the battery lasts 3 hours (2350 recharge cycles). Hopefully I'll buy a new Mac later this year when BTC goes over 120k.
That's amazing for such an old machine!
Ridiculous and I can imagine very frustrating. Glad you finally got it sorted though. Ran into this clip yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bQlB06_Avq0
That experience must have been a bit unpleasant. You have the money available, and you can't make a transaction in the normal way, even though you're using the physical card payment. For my day-to-day purchases, I'm using the CryptoCard. I get 0.1% cashback, and since I don't pay for transfers from my regular account to the CDC, it ends up having that advantage. Not long ago I received a promotional campaign in which if you made a CRO stake you could get a discount on the purchase of a Mac (I'm not sure of the amounts or the conditions). I've had a Widows Surface Pro for over 5 years now, and it's starting to give me some problems (particularly in terms of battery life). I didn't want to make such a big investment before the end of this year, but I have to start looking for options.
Yeah I like that card I should have used it fr.this!
My bank does the same shit all of the time. In fact, I just had them deny service on a payment for domain hosting. Luckily, I didn't want that hosting so I denied the charge. Forgot about it. Two weeks later the charge went through anyway without the bank contacting me 🤦
I have literally fought with them for years trying to get fraud protection turned off after I travelled out of country once and had everything denied (I had informed them prior to my travel....twice). They told me I could always go to an ATM there and do a cash advance. Of course this costed fees for the advance and for the foreign exchange.
One day I will have no bank and be happy :-)
That will be a good day!
Indeed it will.
Congratulations on your new Mac! Never used a Mac haha I wish I can get my own soon! I just couldn't afford it right now.
Buying something is good but the way your money was lying in the bank they shouldn't have called you like that when you needed the thing yourself you would have bought it yourself. Congratulations if this thing has grown.
It is possible going to the Apple store and paying with your card may have worked. In that instance, the chip and PIN work to confirm that it is you making the purchase. However, Barclays is pretty uptight in the diamond-producing assholes sphere.
Out of curiosity, I'm wondering if I could use crypto to buy Apple gift cards to load up my Apple account for purchases. I'll try it with Bitrefill and buy a mouse or something.
Let me know how it goes!
Wow that's really annoying to the tenth degree.
If it make you feel any better I have occaisionally had my charges denied by my AMEX. It seems there are questionable vendors all over the world, wh trigger automatic denials. I was buying a weekend cruise in Thailand and AMEX declined the charge. I had to call Fraud Prevention, and I was advised that the vendor I was using had a record of fraud, so they were blacklisted.
But in your case, it's an Apple Store, so the FRAUD COPS were nipping on your heels for using your own card!
Crazy.
As to your other point and perhaps an important one. When you have your money in a bank, it seems to belong to them, not you.
A customer paid me with a check, which I immediately took to their bank to get cash. They asked me to come back in 4 hours. Then when I showed up they apologized and asked me to come back tomorrow. I called the customer, who apologized, he was quite embarrassed and he came to the bank directly and tried to withdrawal cash from his account to pay me.
The bank declined his request to access his own money to pay me.
He went from embarrassed to furious in a few minutes. He showed me his bank balance, which was in access of the amount he owed me by 10x at least.
The poor teller appearred caught between a rock and a hard place, as the banks customer was in front of her asking for his money and her manager was behind her telling her she couldn't release that much cash to one customer, otherwise they wouldn't have cash for other customers.
I looked at them thinking that their poor planning wasn't my problem. I mean afterall can;t they just ask for more cash from one of their ten branches?? If anyone knows where to get cash in a pinch, it should be a bank!
I had to break the stalemate by asking for a cashiers check. Which they agreed to do, but not before making their customer jump through some hoops and they wanted to charge him a fee.
The nerve and the greed.
Anyhow I suggested they do it for free as an apology for their customer, who now wanted to close his account and move to another bank.
Which now panicked the manager, as well as the poor teller, who seemed to grow smaller with each moment, as she wilted in the heat of this ridiculous situation.
Banks are amazing. You can't live with them, and so far, you can;t live without them.
Jesus that is just unreal... Hopefully he closed his account.
I know right?
The ironic thing is that I later found out that the bank teller had actually requested extra cash to honor the check, and was prepared to pay me when I came back the second time. But her manager heard only part of the story and intervened, not knowing this was extra cash, not just normal cash on hand.
Retrospectively I know understand his facial expressions which seemed strange at the time.
He must have realized that the bank teller was following proper procedure, and she should be allowed to pay me. But then he would have to admit he was wrong, in front of the customer. I guess he was trapped by his ego and he didn't want to admit his mistake. So he ignored the bank teller's request, and his customers request, and denied the dispersal of funds.
So in the end, both my customer and the bank teller were embarrassed because each had promised to pay me. And the teller, who had followed the bank's proper procedure, but now she had been embarrassed by her boss. Who assumed she was acting improperly.
Humans and Banks, a bad combination of egos and rules.
What a chump that guy is!
Yep, that's a good adjective for him.
LOL
Blimey, what a palaver. Glad you got your computer in the end.
Eventually!
UK banks seem to be particularly bad for this anti-fraud crap, as well as AML and KYC. It's all band-aids for an outdated system that is inherently prone to fraud.
Yes fair point about the band-aid actually!
When we deposit our money to the banks we do not own them 100% anymore. Some days ago I wanted to buy a motorbike from an individual seller. I tried to transfer him the money, but the bank did not allow me. Then I went to the nearest atm and I couldn't withdraw the whole sum I wanted, so I sent the money to my other bank account and I did it with 2 transactions and 8 euros in banking fees. Finally, I was 500 euros short, and I thought that this won't be a problem, but it was. The bank did not allow me to sent neither this small sum. So I went to a friend which was nearby and borrowed the money I needed and I gave them back to him the next day that my daily withdrawal allowance was reset.
What a fucking joke!
My co-op account stopped allowing transfers to Coinbase a while ago. Really annoying, both accounts are kyc'd and all worked fine until the co-op decided to change their policy.
So, I can't transfer my own money because the co-op have a bee in their bonnet.
They are so annoying!
Its like an ongoing joke of them letting you know "hey, its not really your money anymore hehe". 🤬 banksters