I made a booking at a hotel with an online booking website, which I've used on a number of occasions. A couple of days before I was due to travel they sent me a message to say there was a problem with my payment and if it wasn't resolved by the end of the day the booking would be cancelled. I assumed I had left out of date details for the card on the site but as I away all day until late and did not have that card with me I couldn't do anything until late that night. I thought I'd left enough time, but hadn't realised the deadline related to the time in the destination country not UK, so the booking was cancelled shortly before I went on line. Fortunately I was able to re-book and sent a message to the hotel apologising. As it was only a couple of days before I was due to travel the booking system said to pay on arrival.
I effectively only use that card for foreign travel as it has no fee for changes of currency, but have one small monthly payment to keep it ticking along. I used to use it all the time for card payments while abroad but as my bank now has a facility of a separate current account that you can transfer money into for other currencies I was planning to use that account for day to day spending and only pay for the hotel on credit.
When I got to the hotel my card was declined. Fortunately I had another credit card with me as I had not transferred enough for the hotel into the foreign exchange current account (although I will now have to pay a currency exchange fee). I did try to resolve the issue with my card provider the next day but their security app kept timing out on me, so I couldn't deal with until I returned to the UK. That aspect is now resolved but I queried why they either couldn't contact me to ask me if it was a valid payment or at least flag it up on their app that they had blocked my card. Apparently they blocked it when the booking website made a test payment of £0 when I first booked..
All I could be told was that as it was blocked for a £nil payment there was nothing they needed to contact me about at the time and there is no process on their app to give such notifications. I did ask how to make that a formal suggestion and was told there is a suggestions button the website, but haven't found it.
I am still asking myself whether it's just me, or surely it's not unreasonable to tell someone you have blocked their credit card or show that information on the app dealing with the card, instead of leaving them to find out late a night in a foreign city.