Originally Posted by
radonc1
SailorJoe If you search my threads on this topic, you will find that I posted many times about my trials and tribulations using my Citi card to buy VGCs at Simon mall.
It took several years...yes years
to get Citi to stop declining my purchases from Simon, and no matter how often I called prior to purchase and no matter how often the rep on the other side of the line said I was good to go, I wasn't.
I finally gave up using this card and switched to another, but they finally relented ( I guess I paid them on time often enough to get me off the suspect list
)
The other infuriating thing with this was that once declined, Simon refused to let me use the card again for that purchase, even when Citi said it was good to go.
My only advice. Use the card organically, pay your bills on time and keep trying. At some point they will stop declining your card, unless you are trying to buy $10K in cards. At that, they may balk.
Yeah, I kept trying to use the card...getting locked... Calling to unlock, until after a while they hard blocked it, saying "in order to verify your identity we have to mail you a code". I waited two weeks or so. Got a letter with a 6 digit number code, called it in and now my card works for most everything.
Still got declined at Simon though. :shakes first: swine Citibank!