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I pointed out, each time, that they were the ones who called me so I should be verifying them. "But, sir, WE are the bank and you could be anyone who just answered your phone."

There has got to be a word for this and similar behavior. Banks, credit card agencies, mobile phone companies are getting really aggressive with how they handle these sort of transaction based interactions and I'm leaning towards wanting to see them get slapped with regulation for it.

I bring it up because a few years back I fell into some hard times, resulting in missing some payments. In a good faith attempt to get caught back up once I found a new job and could right the ship, I called my creditors immediately and tried to make payments and setup payment plans the first paycheck I got.

None of them failed to ask what I thought was a very annoying and horrifically invasive question: "Why were you late on your payments?"

Each time I rebutted asking if disclosing my living situation was required to make a payment or if I should request an escalation to someone who will just take the money. One creditor kept trying to say "We're asking because we want to do you a favor/we understand things are hard sometimes" and I kept asking them if failure to disclose my life situation would prevent payment until they gave up and took the payment.

It strikes me as an offensive, invasive and utterly worthless question and whenever asked I just hang up and call back. Same thing when some entity calls and immediately starts asking for sensitive info. "Send me a letter in the mail with a phone number and I'll call you back when I'm good and ready, otherwise no I'm not just giving you my SSN because you called me at 7:30 on a Monday evening and asked for it".

Fiduciaries are getting bold, I tell you.

The reason they are asking you why you missed a payment is because creditors have hardship payment plans for people in certain hardships. They were trying to see if you were eligible.

"You should probably lead with that next time" is all I have to say in response to that.

I'm far more likely to respond positively, even if ultimately I decline if they were to say "We have a program in place-if you think you're going to miss a payment that will help keep your account on track, would you like to enroll?"

versus

"Why were you late making this payment?"

Of the two, when I went through that period of long-term underemployment, I only ever heard the latter, never the former. Such a curt and abrupt question to ask that comes across much more invasive than helpful.

They tried to tell you that, you just didn't want to hear the message for some reason

"We're asking because we want to do you a favor/we understand things are hard sometimes"

There's more than "a program," creditors have different options/programs, etc. Special options exist for people who were effected by certain natural disasters. They probably would have offered to waive the late fee if you missed a payment because you were in the hospital or something. They were starting a dialog with you about your account status in order to work with you; no need to get all offended about it.

their potential-fraud-detection department was similarly bad. ("You used your debit card at an AM/PM in Washington State!!!!" Yes, I know, it is about 900 feet from my house; I go there regularly.)

A year ago I had an awful experience with this.

We were on vacation at Big Bend National Park, which is hours away from everything in southwest Texas. When trying to pay for breakfast, our card was denied. I tried to call the card company to tell them that it was OK, but couldn't get through - there was no cell service. Outside the restaurant was a pay phone (remember them?) that I was able to use to call their 800 number.

I learned then that they'd actually flagged my card as stolen, so I could no longer use it at all, and to get it turned back on I needed to receive the code they were sending by SMS and read it back to them. The thing was, we were in a dead cell area, we couldn't get the SMS. And Big Bend is mind-bogglingly huge - 1,252 of square miles of mostly desert (there's a whole mountain ranged entirely contained within the park). As far as I could tell, I didn't have enough gas to drive out of the park to get to cell service to achieve this (the park is so big that it's got its own gas station in the middle, and I'd intended to use this - but without my card, how can I?).

It seemed a perfect trap, there was no way we were going to be able to get out. What eventually saved us was that the hotel manager overheard me shouting at the card people, and came out to give me a map, with the places inside the park that can get SMS text highlighted. Using that I was able to fulfill their requirement.

They never were able to tell me why they flagged the card in the first place. They told me that they advise all card holders to warn them when they plan to go out of state. But I live in Texas, and I was in Texas when the charge triggered. They just shrugged that off.

As someone who travels in remote corners of deserts very frequently, I can say that you can never have too much water, fuel, or cash.

And when you're in a scrape, you can often barter with all three.

If you're visiting remote parts of Texas, always have a hat with a brim (there's a reason that cowboy hats are shaped the way they are), bottled water, and a few hundred dollars in cash.

I would add Imodium AD, analgesics, some power bars and jerky, condoms, tampons if you’re female or traveling with women, a compass, weatherproof matches, a small mirror, and a good knife.

Condoms? No emergency so dire as to miss a chance to get laid?

For keeping your matches in if it rains.

Never underestimate the value of condoms for purposes other than intercourse. They’re highly portable, durable, can hold a lot of liquid, and are waterproof. You can use them to waterproof anything from a car’s spark plugs to some tinder or even food. They’re useful as part of dressing certain minor wounds too.

My wife and I (we are both Brits) were driving in the middle of nowhere in Washington state. We stopped at a garage to get petrol/gas and discovered that the credit card machines in the unmanned gas station only seemed to accepted credit cards issued in the US - IIRC the PIN equivalent was a US zip code. Our personal credit cards (UK cards) and cash (no teller) were thus useless. Luckily my wife had a corporate credit card issued in the US that we were able to use, on the principle that she could ask for forgiveness from her company when we got back.

For foreign credit cards oftentimes entering 00000 or 99999 for zip code works.

The other thing that sometimes works is entering the digit part of your postal code and padding it out with zeros. Ex: if your postal code was 1A2B3C you'd enter 12300.

I've had really random declines from time to time for no apparent reason--sometimes for very small amounts. I make a point these days of having backup cards across multiple networks (i.e. both Visa and Mastercard).

Also spare ID and cash. The one time I broke this last rule on a trip I was nearly really screwed. (I lost my license and the hotel didn't want to let me check in. They only relented when I showed other ID and was able to make a just large enough withdrawal from an ATM and pay cash.)

Card fuckup is the only reason I have even a little cash on hand. Even the second hand store near me takes cards now. It is my policy if I am any distance from home to carry a spare car key, and enough cash to fill the tank and get home.

Considering that we could eliminate fraud with a private key chip card, this is really, really sad.

Another reason to have some cash is so if you're mugged, the mugger won't be so disappointed they take it out on you.

Oh I don't carry the cash on me.

I probably should worry more about muggers, but I just can't get myself to be afraid, so.

It's fairly common to read a story about how some carjackers abandoned a car because it unexpectedly had a manual transmission, but I think I also read about a case where they shot the driver out of pique.

I learned not travel with just one credit card after my CU botched a software update while I was in a middle of the trip in Prague - already checked out from the hotel but not yet taken the rental car to drive to the next hotel in a different city. The looming possibility of sleeping in the street was rather instructive.

Since then I always carry three credit cards when traveling, from three different banks, and each from a different payment system in case if a systemic issue.

This is the reason I always travel with >1 debit cards (different banks) and >1 credit cards (different banks)

The fellow that publishes YouTube videos under VinWiki was setting a NYC<->LA driving race record (the Cannonball).

While making their second gas stop, their credit cards were being rejected because Amex erroneously thought it was impossible to legitimately use their credit cards between two locations that quickly.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZNddd9Pxc

Supposedly they also track flights worldwide to assess legitimacy of card-present transactions through distance-time bounding.

I contacted Wells Fargo because their survey emails come from a third party email address and link to a different third party site. I was very specific in my feedback that I thought the survey was legitimate but that they shouldn't habituate their customers to entering even general data on unaffiliated sites. They called me and I reiterated the above and even got a fancy case number. After a month I got a voicemail that they completed their investigation and the survey was non-fraudulent... Hooray.

Don’t despair. If large companies were efficient there would be no place for startups. And what kind of world would that be?

("You used your debit card at an AM/PM in Washington State!!!!" Yes, I know, it is about 900 feet from my house; I go there regularly.)

Bank of America has an interesting optional feature where they geolocate the transaction, and if it's a certain distance away from your cell phone, it triggers the fraud process.

I think if more banks did this, it could cut down on a certain percentage of these problems.

The downside is that you have to trust your bank enough to let it track your phone 24/7. And having recently gone through the privacy notices of several of my bank apps and web sites, I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea, either.

And for what? To protect their money. It's their responsibility to stop fraud and cover losses. Not mine. I'm paying them my monthly service fee to safely store my money. People don't seem to understand this. If I want to saddle all the risk myself I'll use cash in my mattress.

> ... Chase ... It didn't help that their potential-fraud-detection department was similarly bad

I dropped Chase after about the 4th time they flagged my monthly payment to my ISP as potential fraud.