I have the good fortune, or not–depending on your perspective, to be in posession of a creditcard. Up until last week, the card worked pretty well flawlessly for anything from ordering pizza to paying the occasional bill online, in the event I’m too damn inpatient and/or lazy to bother with the slightly more traditional internet banking transfer. However, the last week or so, it’s decided to rather summarily flip me off. Randomly, it decided the CVV code I was using since I got the card–I only got the thing maybe last year or the year before–the code I’ve been using to make 90% of those purchases was no longer as valid as it was 5 minutes before I decided to use it. So I’ve been going through a pretty interesting little roundabout dance with Royal Bank, also known as them what issued my card. Their system, as much as they won’t actually admit it, appears to have ate my CVV code. This is more of a record of what’s going on for my own purposes, and well, in the event some other poor fool winds up with a similar problem. As things happen, I’ll probably come back to this post. My 7 days of fail started pretty much exactly a week ago. In list format, because. Lazy.
- After much arm twisting, teeth pulling, and generally screaming at folks, I got the fundage to purchase the screenreader I need from Frontier Computing
- Called them up and, after a bit of phone dancing, landed the purchase $1100 and some change later
- Fast forward to last Friday, we’re trying to throw money at things down on that other side of the border, requiring I change the address on the card temporarily to a US one–a thing I’ve done a few times before
- Change the address, go to make the payment, get declined due to CVV issues
- CVV is correct, and was entered multiple times by both myself and Shane just to be on the damn sure side
- Call up the bank, WTF at them for a few minutes, get told the CVV’s correct–well, yes, I had a feeling–and to call the merchant
- Rather than beat our heads against that right then, we try throwing a payment in the general direction of AT&T
- Once again, incorrect CVV, once again, we call the bank, once again, CVV is correct
- Make that payment to AT&T via a telephone rep, who *didn’t* ask for the CVV, and it goes through no problem
- Try to find a payment for our first attempted US payment over the phone, no luck
- Try online again, get summarily flipped off, call the bank and, yep, everything’s correct–it’s the merchant’s fault
- Switch back to the Canadian address, and we decide to finally find a use for one of my Tim Hortons gift cards–why in the hell I had two of them, I’ll never know–so it gets handed off to Shane, and we try to throw a few dollars at it via the card
- Once again, we get summarily flipped off because of the CVV, and once again, RBC blames the merchant–this is the third one who’s flipped us off re: the CVV, so now I’m a little less open to that possibility than I was before
- Saturday, we escentially get into hockey mode–which, of course, means pizza, which means ordering via creditcard on account of the bank machine’s over there and we’re not
- That, of course, goes through no problem–of course, they also don’t ask for the CVV either (Hey, I thought they should; not doing so was their idea.)
- Monday, we find out we have approximately 4 days to get paperwork into government offices, and not exactly world’s likeliest chance at being able to physically deliver it to the offending office–sometimes, not being able to drive and living in a small town gets to sucking hardcore
- We decide on a whim, since most if not all of what’s needed is available online, we’ll pull it to the local machine, sign up for a fax number (hello, MyFax), and fire it off to the office that way
- Assuming, since we know it can’t be the merchants all at once having issues it must be RBC that’s broken, and hoping against hope they’ve fixed it, we give signing up for it a try–and, once again, are summarily flipped off
- Now, I’m about irritated and decide screw it I’m going to bed–this was kind of squeezed in between and around various phone and other exchanges with people who generally couldn’t seem to find their way to a clue
- I give MyFax a try again several hours later, no go, Idaho–so again, decide to put it on the back burner until I figure out where the problem’s hiding out
- Rogers, in its infinite wisdom, decides to then pick this morning as the absolute perfect time to decide the money I threw in their general direction isn’t getting to them fast enough, so they flip the switch what puts an end to our phone service
- Not thinking, because why would I want to do that at 5:00 in the morning, I decide–hey, James, let’s just take care of what they say you owe them now and when their money catches up to them, they can just count that towards your next bill
- Of course, the broken that is my creditcard escapes me at this point, so I call in, go through the routine, get summarily flipped off again thanks to bad CVV
- Once again, call the bank, go a few rounds with the phone rep, who promptly blames the merchant–also, once again
- Walk all over this rep, then summarily flip him off
- Take a break from dealing with this, call Rogers directly, apply the appropriate clue that says they will get their money when I have it and not a minute before, then take care of some highly unrelated business before tackling this again
- Call back to RBC, get a rep who’s first response isn’t quite so much to blame the merchant or, for that matter, RBC’s second favourite thing to blame throughout this issue–me
- He does, at least, confirm no, the $1100 and change purchase didn’t likely set off alarms that, in simplest of terms, broke my card
- Go a round or two with him, he also confirms the CVV does what it’s supposed to, decides something about the card’s dead–no, really?
- Sends me out a replacement card, different card number, different CVV, same lovely little creditcard balance–but at least I got a shiny new interest rate out of it
So far, we still have absolutely no freaking idea what made my card go sideways. RBC blames the people I’m giving the info to, or me for entering the wrong info. Everyone I give the info to blames the bank for not confirming it, or me for giving them the wrong info. The bank is able to varify my info, shooting holes in half of both their theories. And I still sit here confused. This thing, whatever it is, isn’t over yet–not, I suspect, by any means. The post will probably be added to as things develop. I should have the new card in about a week or so, and if it’s just as broken, RBC and me will go yet another round. Sometimes, I love banking breakage. Only not really.