A while back, I remember there was a thread of CIBC VISA making random checks of people's income and they would initiate this by blocking their CC and forcing them to call in.

I was wondering if this is still happening and if people on this forum have been a victim of this practice?!

I was, but I think I was the one who started that thread. I plan to cancel my card before they charge my next annual fee.

While I do not know whether it was related to them trying to learn about your current income, I have had very few instances where the retailer has informed me that my card was blocked and that I needed to call in. These were related to irregular/out of pattern spending, such as multiple large charges in a single day, or the one time when I drove from Calgary to Victoria and made multiple gas stops along the way - at the third stop, I believe it was in Hope BC, they blocked it, and once I called, they advised that it was triggered by the use of the card miles apart in one day.

I also know of a couple of people whose cards were blocked because the cards were also used half way around the world in the same day. When they called in, they realized that the numbers were actually stolen.

I got dinged when I was trying to make a small purchase at an Austin Wal-Mart a few months back.. CIBC VISA card just randomly rejected... And big line-up behind me.

Kind of embarrassing, really..

It happened to me last night again! I was registering my hockey team (Ahhh yes, hockey season is back!) and the card transaction didn't go through and I had to call in and clarify things up. Huge lineup behind me, embarrassing. I called CIBC and told them that this is the 3rd time this happens to me using the same "merchant". They did the same thing for the past 2 years and even though I called and told them that I'll be doing this transaction for the foreseeable future, they still blocked me . I told them that they better shape up and if this happens again I will be canceling my card.

I find CIBC great with regards to suspicious transactions. You can register on their site to receive an email "credit watch" or something like that when ever a problem arises. I have the system triggered a few times this past year and each time had the problem resolved in under minutes.

Yes I appreciate the service in a way, but in another way it is such a hassle especially when I have told them time and time again that I will be processing this transaction around the same time this year from the same hockey league. And yet, they still block me and I have to call in and have it rectified. It is really annoying when you have a huge line-up of people waiting to register their team and when space is limited and it comes down to who can get their team registered, I really would not like to have to call in and have it rectified. Luckily, it wasn't a huge deal cause I managed to get the team registered with 5 spots left but it can get on one's nerves!

When my card was blocked, the CSR told me it was done completely at random, not as a result of a fraudulent or out-of-place transaction. They just wanted to confirm details of my credit report and decided to block my card until I returned their call. I wrote about this before, but to make a long story short, I made the rude CSR angry because I wouldn't provide him with numbers from a MasterCard I hold with another bank. He wouldn't let me speak with a supervisor, then "discovered" a suspicious attempted transaction, cancelled my card, and sent me a replacement. I'm keeping the card for now, but will almost certainly cancel before it's renewed for another year.

This happened to me too, they blocked my card without letting me know. And when I called, they said this was a random verification for my information. They asked the 4 last digits of my RBC card (weird) and then wanted me to fax them some documents from Revenu Canada. I refused and canceled the card. I've been with them for 2 years, always paid in time.... kind of disappointing

It appears that they are targeting honest, paying on time individuals with their ridiculous tactics. I don't see the point of verifying information from OTHER banks cards, or asking for revenue canada's slips. Both of these informations are private and confidential. If they want to verify one's income that they call revenue canada and not ask to have this information faxed over.

Maybe a CIBC agent on here might be willing to explain CIBC's actions?!?!

I work for CIBC, however not with CIBC VISA so I don't have much information. To be honest, I've never even heard of this before. I've had a CIBC visa since I was legal age, and this has never happened to me. I've had the card blocked while I was travelling before, which I don't mind at all, cause I just use my mastercard as the back-up, and then call visa when I leave the store and get the card unblocked. And then I get them to credit me the aeroplan miles I would of earned on that purchase. Simple really.

but as for the employment verification, and confirming the other numbers on other visa cards, it's something that is foreign to me.

I can ask around work today, to see if anyone has heard of it. However I work at Telephone banking,so the odds of someone know about Visa procedures and slim.

Sounds like CIBC is doing random audits possibly at the request of rating agencies and holders of its subsidiary paper based on credit card accounts. Given this bank's abysmal record of backing just about every financial boondoggle over the past two decades -- Enron through to the Asset-Backed Paper to dubious US mortgages -- I can well see why some of CIBC's own lenders might want verification that its consumer accounts are not going to tank like those of over 100 US retail banks that have been put onto the danger list. However, I agree that doing this to those customers who pay their accounts on time and have no record of late payments, etc. is not the way to be doing it.

In the meantime, RBC keeps offering to loan me money at 1.9% for four or five months on my AVION Visa!

American Express used to do this to me all the time and then I called them and politely explained that if they blocked my card again, I wouldn't be using it anymore. When the agent told me to call in to validate the transaction while I was in line, I said, "So you want me to call you and wait while holding up a line instead of just pulling out a different card? Seriously?"

Anyway, after that call (I think I spoke to a supervisor), it has never been blocked again - not once.

Good for you! I pulled this trick out to Amex, CIBC, and Royal Bank. My cards were (knock on wood) never blocked again!!!^

According to merchants I have spoken to, CIBC query more transactions than any other CC provider.

Not only that, it does not help at all to call ahead of time to warn them that you are about to make a purchase which is outside your normal pattern. I've been told that the fraud detection heuristics work in real time and can't be defeated by prior warnings. So you'll be forced to call in and confirm at the point of sale in any case.

When chip & PIN finally reaches Canada, this nonsense should stop. I still cannot understand why a highly effective technology, proven to defeat POS fraud, should take so long to be implemented in North America. If it can be rolled out so quickly in multilingual Europe, why the foot dragging over here? This makes me somewhat cynical about CC providers' "concerns" about fraud.