For those who travel frequently overseas...do you really take the time to call your credit card companies to advise them you are going overseas???? I find calling them, and the maze of prompts you have to weed through to get to a human, to be on par with standing in line at the drivers license office.

I've never had an issue with AMEX and would definitely be irate if I was declined just because I didn't call them in advance. Especially if it was a hotel check-in, where they could ask hotel staff to verify identity.

I'm not quite as understanding either as some here that it's Chase and not Marriott. Marriott (or any company that sells their brand logo to a partner vendor) has an obligation to make sure that anything with their name on it lives up to their service expectations. I'm not saying they should be held accountable for every day to day business transaction - but one would think that Marriott might have a problem if their own logo card is being denied to someone checking into one of their own hotels anywhere in the world, just because the customer didn't ask permission of the cc company to travel. Not saying the situation noted above was a Marriott hotel - but it could have been.