Credit Card Trouble
First off let us say we’re sorry for the extra trouble you’re having with your credit card. Unfortunately if you’re on this page we can’t figure out EXACTLY what’s wrong, but here are the most common reasons AND an important warning about trying repeatedly to process the order.
Why didn’t the charge get approved?
By far the most common reason the charge is being declined is the billing street and (or) postal code you provided does not match the billing address your bank has on file for you.
Sometimes it’s something like an apartment number that the bank has on a second line (and you’re putting it on the first street line), or maybe you spell out part of your street name and they abbreviate it. Sometimes you moved and never updated the bank (and none of the other places bothered to check when approving your card).
We can’t look up the address on this end to see what your bank is expecting, at best they will only tell us that “...it’s not a match.” If you take a look at the bills that arrive each month, you probably want to match that exactly. We have seen instances where the “mailing address” and the “billing address” weren’t the same, so the bank actually had a different billing address than where they were sending the bills (that didn’t make sense to ANYONE that day…). But that’s very uncommon.
The second most common reason we see the card fail is that you’re over your limit. That doesn’t always mean you’ve spent over your limit, since somehow there might be holds on your card that are taking up part of the available credit (hotels, rental cars, even failed online transactions can all put a hold on your card).
Why are you having trouble on this website and not others?
There are a number of changes that took effect in the “online credit card world” starting July 1 of 2010 called “PCI Compliance” which sets higher standards for online credit card processing. We switched over to meet the standards back in March 2010 but a lot of sites have yet to implement the requirements (which is probably why you haven’t seen this before). As expected, the banks made a lot of noise to encourage companies to switch, but they didn't really follow up with any actual "penalties" for anyone if they didn't make the changes. It's expensive to do the conversion, so a lot of sites just didn't want to spend the extra time/money on it.
Places like PayPal and Amazon get to have “different rules” because they fall into another category of online business (specifically “greater than 6,000,000 transactions per year” - a threshold we haven't quite broken through yet...). That means the “big boys” don’t have to follow the same strict standards and mismatches in addresses or CV#'s are sometimes ignored. We kind of like following the new rules since we really hate people that steal credit cards and don’t want to make things easier for them (though it bites when it makes it harder for all of us “good guys” - buying or selling).
Do you have an “international” card?
For some reason we see a much higher failure rate with international cards. As best we can tell it has to do with the PCI Compliance changes mentioned above since we didn't used to see this issue. We see this especially in Australia and New Zealand. We’re not sure why and nothing we’ve been able to do has overcome the problem. If you’re sure you have the correct billing address and you're reading this, we probably aren't going to be able to get the card to clear. Best to use something like PayPal (or buy it on Amazon, but the shipping is really expensive there).
Did my order really go through or not?
If you didn’t get an email confirmation there’s usually only two reasons. There was a typo in your email address or the order didn’t get completed. Chances are it’s the second reason if you’re reading this page. But if you’re not sure, just contact us to say you were having a problem and we’ll check for any duplicates and be sure only ONE order goes out (we’ll refund any duplicates right away too). If you decided to create an “account” during checkout, you should be able to see if the order is pending.
What if I just try it a whole bunch of times until it works?
We don’t mind, but we don't recommend that particular strategy. Any time you attempt a transaction with your card, the bank places a “hold” on the funds – usually about 72 hours (though we’ve seen it go as long as 10 days). It’s not a “charge” and, when it clears, there’s no reversal or refund on your account. It just goes away.
Keep in mind the bank will place a hold for each attempted transaction. So please be very cautious about placing additional orders as we don't want to "eat up" your entire credit line for a week. If that’s not a problem for you and you have plenty of credit to burn (or it's a smaller order), no harm in trying it 2 or 3 times to make sure there wasn’t a typo somewhere.
Incidentally we don’t have any control over whether or not a bank places a “hold” on your card. We can’t “opt out” and tell them not to place the holds. It’s the way virtually every bank/credit card company handles transactions.
Even worse, there’s usually nothing we can do from this end to clear those holds after the fact – bank privacy rules normally dictate that the bank won’t even speak to us about your account. However, depending on the bank, you might be able to contact them directly and have them clear the holds faster than the normal waiting period. We've heard mixed results on this in the past.
Can’t you just take my order over the phone instead?
Unfortunately, taking the order over the phone doesn’t change anything since it runs through the same gateway/merchant account and we’d get the same results.
The best thing to do is to check the address the bank has on file for you (you’re going to need it for all online transactions eventually anyway - once more sites go over to the PCI compliance they should be using), and re-try the checkout process. Or use PayPal (or buy it someplace like Amazon, but shipping is awful expensive there...).
Again, our apologies for the extra trouble. Hopefully the little bit of extra hassle is worth it in the long run for everyone by having fewer fraudulent charges. But it IS a pain in the behind for all of us right now.