Chase routinely flags my phone bill that I've been paying to the same company for 5+ years as "potentially fraudulent" and doesn't allow the purchase to go through.
However, they didn't flag a $900 purchase on Chipotle gift cards on the other side of the country as potentially fraudulent and I had to file with them and wait for them to complete an investigation.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Bank of America flagged my account when I used one of thier branches. It was ridiculous. I had no access for a week.
Retailers do it because they pay a penalty when a chargeback happens and payment processors will cut ties with them if their fraud rate is too high.
It’s happened 2 times in my many years of adulting.
First, tried to buy a laptop with shipping address different from billing address. Called them and confirmed I was not a scammer.
Second, bought propane at a gas station, then tried to buy gas. I’m guessing multiple purchases at a gas station indicates stolen card about to run a scam.
The merchant gets charged back for fraud which is why they care.
The merchant gets charged back for fraud which is why they care.
Question: So, I once got an email from a company's customer service and they said to use Paypal instead of the card. Is Paypal safer for the merchant if it turns out that the buyer is a fraudster?
Search “paypal chargeback”
It seem like if the actual card owner find out that a fraudster used their card via paypal, they have two chances at a chargeback, once through paypal, and another with their bank. So I'm no sure why I was told to use Paypal... clueless CS representative? 🤷♂️
Never with "everyday" purchases. The two times it happened to me were a VST plugin and a game engine license.
(I'm also in the US with a nonwhite name.)
Never.
Damn, lucky. I feel like some retailers just fucking hate me. I have a non-white name, and I'm in the US, so... I'm kinda suspecting that they just hate immigrants or something... 🤔
Edit: I meant like: I think they use some AI "Fraud Detection" and my name got flagged because the training data they used for the AI were with American names, and so my name looked "suspicious" to their AI.
I've been using protonmail basically since its inception for money-related stuff (due to it being secure), and the one time I've had a fraud flag appear while using it was due to being on a VPN at the same time.
... But I've had that also happen when I used to daily drive Gmail, so I can't imagine the Proton part made the difference.
Obviously anecdotes aren't very good evidence, and maybe in your experience it was your email - but if that is the case, I'd be weary of any provider that automatically flags non-"big tech" addresses as fraudulent. That likely means they're rather lazy about their cybersecurity.
It happens to me every time at dispensaries and strip clubs. I guess it's pretty obvious why.
Twice. Once when I was buying large appliances which I basically never do and a call to my bank cleared that up, and once trying to buy a video game directly from the company (instead of say through steam or gog) and going in to the bank fixed that.
Especially when the retailer does it. Like wtf dude, why do they care if its someone spending their money legitimately, or if its stolen, they get money either way. Is this some weird "we stopped fraudsters" PR campaign?
Sometimes people just try to do the right thing
Never. Not even when I saw fraudulent charges on my statement and reported them to my bank.
Never. What are you doing?
I mean, idk 🤷♂️
About that Uber incident: I've never use them before, and the first time I had to use it, they flagged by brand new account. I spend an hour to talk with the CS, and they unlocked it. Then 1 trip later, they blocked it again. Wtf lol. (So I just used Lyft for the trip home)
Also, walmart's online store seems to have banned me when I never even went there before in my life (they keep marking accounts as "fraudulent").
Amazon also once flagged account as fraudulent, so I just stopped using them for a year, then made a new account its been fine ever since. (I know, Lemmy hates Amazon anyways, but that's not the point of this post. I don't want to debate that here.)
Also, I think Mcdonald's app (I was hungry and needed food mmkay don't judge me) once just rejected my card for no reason, so I just had to walk in and talk to people. I hate it, I hate having to talk to people.
And there are too many that I can't count them all.
Like, I feel like there's some weird algorithm out there targeting me.
You should think about what's wrong with your cards and bank account. There's obviously a reason everything is blocking them.
I think it might be the "@protonmail"
I guess its time to make a @gmail just for buying stuff... 😓
Highly doubt it.
I mean... I just got this email from the customer support (cropped out the personal info):
I think it is the @protonmail address from the wording of it.
But like idk what I'm supposed to do, that email is the one associated with my bank. 🤔
(I'm not gonna explain what my purchase is for or which retailer, just the fact that it is an expensive item.)
Call your bank.
You can use @pm.me instead of @protonmail.com
I think the .me top-level domain is gonna flag it even more.
I mean... could it be the address then? I mean, every incident happened with the billing address as the same address I'm living at right now. Perhaps the previous resident (like that's at least 15 years ago before anyone else lived here) somehow got the address marked as fraudulent? Perhaps the previous resident returned stuff too frequently and got the address on some sort of blacklist?
Do you happen to use a VPN?
No, I always use the Chrome browser and on the real IP for anything money related like banks or purchases. I use a "normal" phone OS (meaning: no custom roms), so that can't be the reason either.
How long before a cell carrier re-issue an IP address. I know if you use mobile data, you get a new IP very often, like if you turn data off and back on, you get a new IP address. So... Maybe that, every time my purchase was marked as fraud, it could be that I just got assigned an IP that was just used by a fraudster before?
Only happens when I order something twice in quick succession
I’ve had it happen when buying gift cards online from Costco. Definitely annoying
Haven't had it happen yet..