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Bank/CC declines due to fraud protection

fischersd

fischersd

macrumors 603
Original poster
Oct 23, 2014
5,380
1,942
Port Moody, BC, Canada
People should contact their bank or credit card company when they ordered at the start of the pre-order window, as there's been more than 30 days between the pre-authorization and the now charging of their card for the watch.

Many cards / banks automatically decline these transactions (and don't notify their customers of having done so) as part of their fraud protection.

By giving your bank / CC company the "heads up" you should keep your payments from being declined, so you don't risk receiving your order in a timely manner.

Now, if your payment has been declined…

This bit from fireguy286:

Call the number on your card and get the payment opened again. In some cases your whole card may be frozen until you do, not just that Apple purchase.

You can either call Apple back after that and have them reauthorize, or on your order status page there will be banner with red text above your order with a button to update payment options. The lightbox popup from there will let you either reauthorize the card on the order or enter a new method. When that's done it will tell you it's successful (hopefully...) and you'll get a confirmation email. That's it.
 
If you have notifications set up from your bank or card you will catch this pretty quick. If not Apple will eventually send you an Action Required email which will also let you know something is wrong. You typically have up to 48hrs before you will be out of line and order cancelled.
 
Unless you never do large purchases, they won't automatically decline it and notifying them is unnecessary, as is the case with many of us. Their fraud algorithm uses your spending habit to determine whether or not something is suspicious.

I've heard of horror stories of members getting repeatedly declined for even the smallest purchases, but something is clearly wrong or they need to switch to a better bank.
 
Again, a lot of them are being declined because it's greater than 30 days since the pre-auth.

Me, I'd rather give them the heads up than risk a delay.
 
JayLenochiniMac said:
Unless you never do large purchases, they won't automatically decline it and notifying them is unnecessary, as is the case with many of us. Their fraud algorithm uses your spending habit to determine whether or not something is suspicious.

I've heard of horror stories of members getting repeatedly declined for even the smallest purchases, but something is clearly wrong or they need to switch to a better bank.
Click to expand...

That is absolutely not true. It's a lot more than spending habits, there's location, time of purchase and so on. I make large purchases all the time. I've been declined twice in my entire life. One was legit fraud and the other was problem with the terminal software that flagged the transaction for security. So this morning made #3. My bank specifically told me their preauth window was exceeded for how the charge came through. Every financial institution does things differently, and more than a few ran in to this issue today.
 
fireguy286 said:
That is absolutely not true. It's a lot more than spending habits, there's location, time of purchase and so on. I make large purchases all the time. I've been declined twice in my entire life. One was legit fraud and the other was problem with the terminal software that flagged the transaction for security. So this morning made #3. My bank specifically told me their preauth window was exceeded for how the charge came through. Every financial institution does things differently, and more than a few ran in to this issue today.
Click to expand...

Location, time of purchase, etc. are also part of "spending habits." Nevertheless, it's a good idea to notify just to be on the safe side if it's been 30 days.
 
I'm one of the idiots that did not contact my bank ahead of time and it's now caused me a minor delay of at least a day in receiving my watch. It was quite the ordeal actually, as I had to call Apple twice, and my bank twice.

Chase Bank said their fraud protection was resulting in a lot of calls about Apple orders.
 
Can't Apple in theory be proactive to prevent this by doing the pre-authorization again or is there a technical reason why this is not possible? Some late birds may not get their watches until July.
 
When you call what do you say? I'm expecting a charge from Apple soon, please don't decline it?
 
I did contact my bank. They always decline apple charges and I didn't want any trouble. So I called and let them know, they assured me things would go smoothly. Ha!

30 minutes before I get on a plane for vacation on 4/25 I get an email from apple. Your card has been declined. I call my bank. They do some things and say go ahead and put the charge through again. I make the mistake of saying thank you and end the call. Go to apples site and recharge the card. Declined.

I call bank back. I tell them what just happened and about my previous call a few minutes prior. Now they tell me that there is a note saying I called and told them to automatically decline ALL apple charges to my account. FFS! After putting me on hold for 20 mins they come back and say they have removed the decline all apple charges but the problem is not on their end declining my card, I have to call apple.

I call apple and they manually reenter my card and run it and all goes well.

So much for attempting to make things run smoothly ahead of time. :D
 
Just my opinion, but I don't think pre-calling does much. That's good if you're traveling international or big shifts. But these things are all software flagged/declined before it even gets to a fraud team review to read notes CS may enter for you.
 
fireguy286 said:
Just my opinion, but I don't think pre-calling does much. That's good if you're traveling international or big shifts. But these things are all software flagged/declined before it even gets to a fraud team review to read notes CS may enter for you.
Click to expand...

I agree. I am not sure how much pre-calling is going to help. As someone said above, I believe these types of holds/cancellations have more to do with your purchasing habits than the pre-authorization hold time.
 
It's a bit of both. Better safe to contact your bank / credit card provider to make certain they don't hold it up.

We're still seeing a LOT of declines, with no notifications. People should be proactive to try to avoid it.
 
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