# "Restricted Card" (Laser)



## Padraigb (5 Jun 2012)

I attempted to buy prize bonds online, using my Laser card. The transaction was declined.

Telephone contact with The Prize Bond Company and with BoI didn't help. The Prize Bond Company say that my bank stopped the transaction; the bank says that my account is in good standing and that no request was received.

Eventually a Prize Bond employee searched the computer files, and told me that the explanation recorded in their system is "restricted card". It remains restricted.

I want my card unblocked. As neither the bank nor the Prize Bond company admit to having imposed the restriction, how do I go about it?


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## Tired Paul (5 Jun 2012)

Could there be a max daily limit on the card and you are trying to purchase bonds above this limit. I know my card has a €700 daily limit.


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## Padraigb (5 Jun 2012)

Thanks, Paul. The bank tells me that my daily limit is €1500, and I was working within that limit.

I tried a smaller transaction (€500) a couple of days later, and it was declined. It seems that my card can not be used to purchase prize bonds unless somebody does something.


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## Willy Fogg (5 Jun 2012)

If the bank restricted the card, it wouldn't be working anywhere. There isn't any ability to selectively restrict a card from a particular retailer (and why would BOI waste time pottering around doing that to random accounts, even if they could?)

Sounds like Prize Bonds selling you a load of hooey.


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## Padraigb (5 Jun 2012)

What sort of hooey? What's in it for them? It's hardly that the Prize Bonds Company want to refuse my money. It's not like being an unwelcome guest in a hotel, somebody they would prefer not to have on the premises.

This was an online transaction, and something resulted in my transaction being declined. I'm trying to find out what went wrong for two reasons:
1. so that it can be put right;
2. so that I can have words with whoever is responsible for inconveniencing me.


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## markpb (5 Jun 2012)

Padraigb said:


> This was an online transaction, and something resulted in my transaction being declined.



Perhaps Prize Bonds use a payments provider who flagged your card/transaction as suspicious and blocked the payment. In this case, Prize Bonds would think it was declined by the bank but the bank would never have seen your transaction.


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## Padraigb (5 Jun 2012)

Perhaps so. But how do I get at them? The bank says my standing is good; the Prize Bond Company seem not to have a number to phone; I don't even know who blocked the transaction, and is keeping my card blocked.

I find this really disturbing. Somebody (or somebody's computer) is messing me about, and I can't get answers.


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## DingDing (6 Jun 2012)

Does any address / contact details you gave the prize bond company match the billing address.
Are you buying the prize bonds from a computer in Ireland, I had a transaction declined when I tried to purchase something from an Irish site while in the UK.
There could be some kind of mismatch that is showing up the transaction as suspicious.


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## Padraigb (6 Jun 2012)

Thanks for the suggestions, DingDing, but I can't see that I did anything that should trigger an alert. The transaction is about as straightforward as it could be: 
- my address with the Prize Bond Co is the same as the billing address on the card;
- yes, I'm in Ireland, and everything happened here;
- Herself and I have an account number with the Prize Bond Co (same address, etc), and I was purchasing in our joint names (yes, correctly entered and checked several times);
- I bought prize bonds recently in exactly the same way that has now failed.


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## thunder99 (7 Jun 2012)

Sometimes internet transactions fail because of network/traffic problems. If the card is then retried it might get flagged on the fraud prevention system.

To be honest I wouldn't waste energy chasing it up. If the card is only been rejected by one merchant it's not the end of the world. When transactions get declined on our system, we have very little information available as to why. If we decline a transaction ourselves, we would very rarely tell the customer why it was declined (not much point building a fraud prevention system and then telling potential fraudsters how it works).


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## thunder99 (7 Jun 2012)

Padraigb said:


> - I bought prize bonds recently in exactly the same way that has now failed.



Actually that may be it. They may a limit on the maximum you can buy


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## Padraigb (7 Jun 2012)

I was bothered about it because the block on my card was continuous and there is no good reason why it should have been declined.

I have complained to both the bank and the Prize Bond company, and found it necessary to be fairly persistent, as both parties were taking a "not me, guv" position.

But it seems that somebody may have done something, because today, after several frustrating days, my card was accepted. But I'll bet that I won't get an explanation, and I have no way of knowing if I or anybody else will be messed up in this way again.


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## CharlieR (11 Jun 2012)

We had to buy them in 1500euro blocks but the laser worked fine after a few refused attempts, once I spoke to AIB they magically started to get approved.


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## iscritto (12 Jun 2012)

Any chance you put n/a in any of the fields on the form. Happened to me ... it kept saying restricted card,  I called the company involved and they were very helpful... said it happened all the time ... it's the / that causes the issue.


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## Padraigb (12 Jun 2012)

I am satisfied that I did everything correctly (and I made several separate attempts); in addition, I made two attempts to transact the business by phone, and the card was rejected there also.

I have made some noise both with the bank and the Prize Bond Company. The result seems to be that my card is now unblocked, but nobody is coming back to me with an explanation of what happened.

I'm not happy about this: I now feel that I can not trust the card to perform for me. Suppose I were out of the country and my card were declined. It looks to me as if I could be cut off from my money, with everybody denying that they have any responsibility to get things sorted so that I can spend my own money. 

To me, the payment system is a fundamental element of my relationship with the bank: they hold my money for me, and they obey all properly-formulated instructions from me to make payments to persons I designate. If that does not work, I am entitled to feel aggrieved.


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## Daisy2012 (14 Jun 2012)

Feeling aggrieved about a bank process is a bummer, eh? Particularly when YOU have done everything right and according to the rules. 

The way that these things work, Padraigb, are:
a) The purchaser enters their card details onto the system
b) The system sends the transaction request to the payment gateway, which then queries the bank.
c) A reply comes back to the system. It is either YES, or NO (often with a reason) or MAYBE. 
d) The Maybe result is usually a request for a telephone verification - a random check made occasionally for anti-fraud purposes. In an online scenario, the Maybe result means that the transaction is then declined (as the system can not ring the bank).
e) The NO result sometimes sends back a reason which can be interpreted by the system or the system operators. Sometimes it's not able to be correctly interpreted.

The important thing to note is that if your transaction is declined because of a Maybe result, the card will be restricted for at least another 24 hours on that system. Some systems may never unblock the card - and it sounds as though the Prize Bond system has very stringent anti-fraud policies built in, which do not lift the restriction.

I can understand why their systems would be so stringent, given the nature of what they are selling.

The second important thing to note, Padraigb, is that these procedures are FOR YOUR SECURITY AND PROTECTION. The banks operate them to ensure that YOUR MONEY is not misappropriated. In the same way that they sometimes don't let you put money into your account when you want to, they sometimes don't let you spend your money when you want to, just because it just might be someone else trying to put money into your account or spend your money. 

Bummer, eh?


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## Padraigb (14 Jun 2012)

Thanks, Daisy.

What's bugging me is that 
- The bank have told me that no request was received for payment (I'm not taking that as an established fact). They have confirmed that there was no reason to decline the transaction (I have the funds; the spend was within the daily limit; there was no other spend on the day).
- The Prize Bond Company has no protocol for telephone verification, and they tell me that they are never asked to seek one. That seems to make some sense, because investing in prize bonds is not a transaction that a card fraudster would attempt.
- It is apparently impossible for me to find out what happened and address it.

It's the last point that particularly bothers me. From time to time over the years I have experienced the circumstance where a vendor needs to get telephone authorisation; that's fine. What's not fine is that a transaction can be blocked and I can do nothing to get it unblocked. For example, I recently visited Lithuania. One of my first actions was to go to an ATM to get some spending money (they are not in the euro zone). If some random event in the system blocked my card and I was not able to get it unblocked, my life would have been made more difficult.

Yes, I agree that security protocols are necessary. What I don't accept is that there isn't a system that allows me to to, in effect, say "Yes, this is really me, and yes, this is what I want to do with my money. What do you want as verification: my mother's maiden name?" It's being locked out that infuriates me.


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## Padraigb (10 Jul 2012)

My bank manager called me last week. He told me that my card had not yet been activated. I am sure most people here know what that means: when you get a new card, they want you to use it in an ATM before you can use it remotely. That makes good sense as a security measure. The snag with that explanation was that I don't have a new card: it's well and truly battle-hardened.

Today I got another call from the bank. They have it figured out. A few weeks ago I asked for my ATM cash limit to be increased from its historic €300 to €700, which is quite a commonplace limit nowadays. That was done in about a minute at the customer service desk. What nobody realised was that the change in the limit meant that the card was treated by the computer system as a new card, needing to be activated in an ATM.

So: a computer glitch, but not as serious as the one in Ulster Bank.


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