Originally Posted by
serpens
I'm sorry I'm having such difficulty making myself clear. I'm asking to have simple, real-time access to the code the merchant is using at the time I check. Of course the code could change. We seem to have different opinions about how often it changes, and I already said you almost certainly know more about that than i do.
I'm mystified by your assertion that Visa would not have the code, unless you mean that Visa applies the code in effect at the time the charge posts rather than at the time the purchase is made. But even if Visa doesn't have the code, someone does. Someone provides it to Chase.
Chase just use whatever the code the merchant uses to bill the transaction. That is the "someone" that provides the code to them.
Originally Posted by
serpens
And Chase could provide it to its customers.
At what cost, even if this is possible? Let alone that it is NOT possible from all practical purposes. Not even Visa would have the correct code as explained in this well-written post quoted below that I bolded the most pertinent part to your expectation.
Originally Posted by
Zorak
My interpretation of what's been said recently, is that Chase cannot 100% predict how the next transaction from a particular merchant will be coded. They do know how the most recent transaction was coded, however.
So, it seems they could certainly build a system that lets you look up this info. There's still a problem in that we, the consumers, don't necessarily how a transaction will post -- you might be buying from XYZ company but they actually process the transactions through some other business unit that, if you wanted to look it up, you would actually look up ABC.
So if you're Chase, you have to:
- pay programmers to write this lookup tool instead of some other feature
- hire/train staff to handle service calls when a customer wants to know why they looked up XYZ but it posted as ABC
balanced against, what incremental revenue will implementing this feature bring in vs. what customers will be lost if you don't.
From my point of view, I don't see a compelling business case for this. And people sweating to hit the $300 annual travel bonus are probably not high value customers they'll be sorry to see go.
Very well said. Though there would still be some folks thinking they are paying a high fee card they should get whatever they feel they should, despite the T&Cs have already covered this particular area in no uncertain language. People who sweat the losing of 3x on a few thousand dollars travel spend certainly not the high value customers Chase want to snatch from cards like AMEX Plat. It is the unpleasant reality, plain and simple.