I thought I was doing the right thing by calling ahead to Citi and letting them know I would be traveling abroad and shopping with their card, so as to avoid any unnecessary fraud alerts.

Of course, I was wrong.

A small purchase of about $100 was denied. OK, that's really annoying, and what makes it worse is that it took a 20+ minute call, including escalation to a clueless supervisor to get the account working again.

For those of you raping Citi for multiple versions of the AA Exec card and getting a refund of the annual fee, I cheer you on.