Globaliser

The card company might not know that. If I were to order online from a supermarket, the delivery might be made to one of about five addresses, only one of which is the billing address of the card.

golfmad

Yes, it's possible although I would guess that the vast majority of people only have a single address registered to their card. I suppose I struggle a bit with the whole decision-making process because I've been party to some pretty odd experiences myself.

Most recent was the transaction on a Visa card. Somebody used my card number but a completely different name and address - about a thousand miles away and somewhere I've never been - to order a pair of very expensive sunglasses online. Bizarrely, the retailer called me to tell me they were having difficulty delivering the products to the fraudster. The Visa company have similar fraud checks and from time to time tell me of transactions that they believe might be fraud; not this time though.

Given my personal experiences I'm just a bit sceptical that the risk assessment processes in use at the credit card companies could do with some refinement.

[And don't get me started on the complete lack of PIN and signature checks here in the US. What's the point of a signature strip if no-one bothers to check it?]

chistery

Were you altering your shopping whilst on holiday? Two transactions in the same day from different countries may get flagged?

Globaliser

I'm sure that more could in theory be done. I agree with your impression that they seem to use a very limited set of information at the moment. But speculating for a moment, there might be serious resource implications if an authorisation request from a merchant (which is presumably what triggers the fraud alerts) had to include information such as proposed delivery address.

stifle

The merchant has the option of submitting the address* for verification if desired. If a positive address match is obtained, the merchant is protected against certain chargebacks.

*I believe all that's submitted is actually the house number and numeric part of postcode.

EDIflyer

My impression is that some already do this, at least by way of post-code - often not for the delivery address but for the billing address, so that at least if someone just got hold of a card number/expiry without knowing the billing address they wouldn't be able to place an order. I've certainly had an order refused recently on my MasterCard where I mistakenly gave the wrong billing address - the retailer came back saying this was why the payment failed and when resubmitted with the correct one it went through. Some US petrol stations have something akin to this by way of asking for a ZIP code (which causes issues for non-US cards, although sometimes 00000/99999/90210 seem to work!).

EDIflyer

Ahh, beaten to it by stifle I see

Globaliser

The billing address, certainly - that's routine.

But golfmad was wondering where the fraud risk was if the delivery was going to the billing address. It's certainly logical that this would reduce the fraud risk. But I wasn't aware of any routine submission of the delivery address as part of the authorisation process, so the credit card company may well not know whether the transaction is for delivery to the billing address or to another address.

EDIflyer

Ah, OK - I see your point, Globaliser. It would certainly be annoying if different addresses were not permitted, although I suppose were such a system to be in place then card issuers to allow customers to notify them in advance of potential delivery addresses. Some retailers (I think Play.com was one of them) only allow delivery to the billing address - sometimes just for the first order, sometimes just for orders above a certain value. This can be quite annoying if you're not going to be in at the billing address to receive it!

PanGalactic

Just had a call from Amex fraud department, apparently the transaction was "pended" again so Tesco still haven't got their money even though the shopping got delivered no problem after they put the transaction through again.

I politely let the agent know how annoyed I was to have received this fraud warning and asked why it coud have happened.

Apparently they do know the details of the flights I booked and use the info for fraud detection purposes!

I suppose it's a good thing when it works, but annoying when it doesn't.

Wozza2404

What was the expiry date for the 40% BA Transfer bonus?

golfmad

I received the UK offer letter yesterday (redirected from our UK address so a week or so behind you lot). Expires end October 2012. 40% bonus.

crazyarmadillo

pretty new to the AMEX transfer bonus etc. Recently took out AMEX plat. Received my 50,000 bonus and now thinking about transferring to avios.

I don't need avios at the moment, but am thinking to do the transfer now because of the current transfer bonus.

But i cannot see this bonus when I log in and it just says 1000 points = 1000 avios.

Its a UK based Amex - is this the issue?

If so, does Amex UK ever offer such bonus?

If not, can I transfer my UK points to a friends US Amex account ?

Thanks

Raffles

You cannot transfer to a friends US account, only to another UK account.

These bonuses are becoming more regular, one or two a year, but they are targetted.

The trade off, for you, is how long you want to pay the £37 per month Plat fee before cancelling.

What you could do is get an Amex Gold card for yourself (fee free for first year) and then cancel Plat. Your MR points are secure because of the Gold and you then have a years grace to use them during your Gold fee-free first year.

Even better ... refer your partner for a Gold. You get 12k for referring, he/she gets 22k for being referred. You can tehn pay the £15 fee to transfer your 50k to your partner and cancel your own Plat. When a bonus comes along, you move them to your partners BA account.

crazyarmadillo

great - sounds fantastic thanks for the advice.

so am assuming that I just haven't been targeted yet - only had the card for a few months so maybe that's why.

Anyway, the gold card sounds a good way to go and also the benefit of x2 points I believe in supermarkets etc.