Barclays
 

Hi,

I have a barclays arrival card which I tried using to buy a gift card.

Fraud alert was triggered and the transaction canceled.

When I called the customer service, they asked me to go to an ATM or a bank and do a cash advance. This is after verifying all the security questions from me.

Why would they ask me to go to a bank to do a cash advance?

Has anyone experienced this?

What did you tell them?

I told them to ask me whatever they want on the phone.

Has anyone experienced it?

Did the transaction get cancelled or did it not get authorized?

I've never had a CC CSR tell me to go to a bank or ATM to get a cash advance.

I have a Barclays Rewards card and had many "not Authorized" when breaking in the card.

I think they do that when they need to verify your identity against your ID. They can't check your ID over phone so they make you go to a bank and do a cash advance at a bank.

I am sure they said to go to a teller and not an ATM machine as teller will be forced to check your ID. Once teller initiates your cash advance, it will be rejected by your CC. Teller will probably have to call in and talk to someone and verify that they checked your ID and the person in possession of the card is the right person.

There's one time consuming way to verify identity in a digital age. OP also mentioned CA at ATM where ID wouldn't be checked.

I would be LIVID if a CC company had me go through this just to verify my identity. What a colossal waste of my time. You open an account with less work than that.

OP, I would call back and ask why they want you to do that. It's perfectly fine/acceptable/normal for people to buy gift cards with credit cards for everyday uses, you know like for a gift.

I had the same thing happen to me.

Situation:

I called in (under my dads account) trying to lower the cash advance limit from whatever it was down to $1. After answering all the security questions and being bounced around to multiple CSRs, they finally said that the card is now locked and can only be unlocked by going into a back and requesting a cash advance and showing ID. I suspect it's because the original CSR got spooked when I was supposed to be a 60 year old guy, but sounded more like a 20 year old guy. Anyway, I thought it was rather ridiculous that the entire point of the phone call was to lower my cash advance limit so I would never get hit with one, and instead being countered with having to go to a bank to request a cash advance if I want to continue using the card. Of course I was a bit pissed at first, but ultimately, we had just opened the card to get the 50,000 miles initially and hadn't really planned on using it anyway.

Moral of the story:

we never went to the bank and the card has sat dormant for the past 4 months. Maybe one day if we're looking for some time to kill, well go to a bank...maybe. There's a nice way to fund citi accounts initially with a barclays card. And with the rather sizeable credit limit on that card, that would be an easy free one-way to Japan. So perhaps we will take a trip to the bank after all...