problems with john lewis credit card

[PingPongBat]

Anyone else have a JL credit card who is having problems with it being declined all the time?

Mine has been declined 7 or 8 times in the last 2 months, but no actual fraudulent activity has ever taken place. The first time was when a recurring payment of 79p for online storage was blocked, as they seemed to think - after allowing it for 6 months - it was fraud. I've had various explanations - sometimes they blame the merchant website (which was the JL website on one occasion), or 'there are lots of fraudulent transactions at New Look', and - my personal favourite - 'there's a lot of fraud about at the moment'

Each time I have to call them to get my card unblocked. Even though I told them I am buying a new kitchen and they 'allowed' me to pay the deposit to a local kitchen company before Christmas, then when I tried to buy a tumble dryer a few weeks later, they blocked my card again, and today it was when I tried to buy clothes online for my DD. As I do regularly.

I know it's in my interest for them to be alert to fraud, but on average it's being blocked once a week now

Anyone else out there with one of these cards having similar issues? Or are they singling me out for some reason???

Yes. I gave up in the end and closed the a/c. It was horrendous.

This happens to me a lot! I was ordering something last week when it happened again - card declined - so I used another, and JL wrote to me to say they'd been trying to get in touch with me (pretty sure they hadn't) and they'd blocked my card due to suspicious activity.

So annoying!

In a way I pleased it's not just me, I was beginning to get paranoid! But sorry to hear others have had similar issues. Their website looks like something out of the dark ages, too, when compared to the other cards.

Hey ho, another call to security this morning followed by cancelling my account

I've had one for years and never had an issue. Only time my card has been declined is when the chip has gone

I've had mine for years, and never had an issue. I use it abroad a lot, too, without problems.

I never had any issues until December last year, refusing my 79p online storage payment seems to have triggered some sort of Armageddon in my account.

I wonder if they're just trying to get rid of me? I pay off my card in full every month so they don't get a penny in interest from me.

I think it has a lot to do with the algorithm and how well you conform to 'standard' spending behaviour.

I do suspect that once you've had one flag on an a/c, you are likely to get more, in some self-perpetuating way. Also, I felt that because I don't have fixed routines and spending patterns (self employed) and I travel around the UK intermittently, that sparked issues.

I had similar issues (really bad - it hated me going to SW england with a passion ) with a Virgin c/card but i've also had several cards that have never given an issue no matter how 'erratically' I use them. I am unreasonably grateful to those c/card companies

Yup, we have this problem and it drives us mad.

In our case I'm not sure if it's because we don't use if that often but when we do, it's a relatively large amount. But that's what we use credit cards for rather than day to day usage so tbh it's not unusual for our pattern of spending so it's annoying they don't figure that out.

we don't use if that often but when we do, it's a relatively large amount. But that's what we use credit cards for rather than day to day usage so tbh it's not unusual for our pattern of spending so it's annoying they don't figure that out.

Yes THIS.

There doesn't seem to be much learning capability in the system, does there?

Likewise fidel1ne, no other cc card company seem to have an issue with the way we use the cards. Don't know what JL are playing at really. Fraud prevention is great but if we can't ever buy something then it defeats its primary purpose, surely.

None whatsoever fidel1ne.

Just spoken to JL card security department. The story today is "a flag has been put on your account in the last few days"... "mastercard have started an investigation into one of the merchants you've been using" because "your card details may have been compromised". "We were due to ring you yesterday or today to inform you".

It sounded like he was reading from a script. So they are cancelling my card & sending out a new one by courier, and given me 200 points to make up for the fact that I couldn't buy what I wanted to buy yesterday.

Looking back at my phone records I have called them on average once a week for the last 6 weeks to sort out issues. So I'm not sure I believe this most recent excuse.

Yeah I don't get it with anyone else either, I don't understand why it's just JL.

Considering closing the account now because the card is meant to be for convenience! Also the amount of points isnt really worth much, we get the odd £10 every now and then.

I'd be tempted to have someone like Which investigate this (or Guardian Money, MoneySavingExpert or something). I had a slightly similar experience with Waitrose - you know how they randomly select people who use the scanning handset whilst buying their shopping to have the basket re-scanned? I was 'randomly selected' literally ten times in a row. Eventually I made a complaint because it was like it had put me on some permanent shitlist of rotters and thieves.