How to keep your customers

Placing an online transaction today, I was unexpectedly transferred to a shady-looking page titled “Verified by Visa” that asked for personal details in order to setup some sort of password that I could use to verify my identity when using my Visa card online.

First off, the page was ugly and badly designed, leading me to believe that it was itself fraudulent. Secondly, the linked information about why the system would be beneficial to me was in legalese and very confusing, I was unable to ascertain why I would want to participate in such a system, except that I was apparently being forced to. I tried a few ways to back out the transaction to complete it without the Verified By Visa screen, but was unsuccessful. I ended up just using my MasterCard to make the purchase.

Then a few hours later I received a call from Visa’s fraud department, concerned about fraudulent activity on my account. I had to verify several bits of personal info, answer multiple choice questions, and wait on hold, all for the privilege of being read my transaction and asked to verify that it was, in fact, mine. After that, the card was “unblocked” and the transaction — which I no longer wanted, seeing as I had already used my MasterCard — was put through.

Thanks Visa. Lesson learned? Use MasterCard for online purchases. And don’t trust the Visa card for anything important.

2 replies on “How to keep your customers”

  1. I thought that Verified by Visa was optional. Mastercard has a similar program called “SecureCode” which is opt-in (you have to create a passcode linked to your card number).

    Citi has something nice for online shopping at sites you don’t trust where they generate a single use card number/expiration date. That seems to protect one pretty well since they can’t do anything with it past the first charge.

    I’m not sure how much SecureCode or Verified by Visa would protect me, though. I mean, as long as there are still millions of places that don’t use SecureCode/Verified by Visa, anyone stealing my number could just use it at any of those places.

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