Credit Card Denied? Don't Compound the Problem

Whenever we travel internationally we call the banks of any credit cards we will be taking with us. We inform them of our travel dates and the countries we will be visiting.

We do not do this when we travel domestically and with all of our travels throughout the United States we have never had a problem.

Then we were talking with friends who visited Florida and needed to buy a laptop. While at Best Buy, their credit card was denied. It immediately hit me that the problem arose because they were buying an expensive piece of technology.

They tried another card and that was also denied. A friend with them tried his card and that too was denied.

Apparently, once a purchase gets flagged, any credit card used to try and make the purchase will be denied. All three banks had to be called to free up the cards.

Moral:
If a credit card is denied on a purchase, call the card bank immediately. Do not try other cards and put those out-of-order also.
And maybe it's just not such a bad idea to call the card bank whenever you travel out of your home area.....