When my body changes from the chair I’m sitting in, you know I’m having an issue. Standing up, and leaning towards my desk, I found myself, repeating to my client, Alla, that what I was seeing, was correct.
What she was hearing, was something she did not want to hear.
With credit card payments, its really frustrating to convey that something didn’t go through. Some people have this belief, that we can magically snap our fingers, and the decline will appear to be an approval.
For instance, the people who insist that I must be typing the number in wrong, and that they have money on the card. And it continues to decline. There must be something I am doing really wrong, so I must seek out my supervisor to tell them EXACTLY the same thing, I am doing.
With Alla, it was telling her what exactly “unable to access funds” means “declined.” I even had to go as far as telling her what “declined” meant and what I was looking at, was possibly wrong.
“Are you sure? Can you have a supervisor look at this for me?”
“Ma’am,” I stood up from my chair, “My supervisor is going to see the same thing I do. We were unable to access funds.”
“What does that mean?”
“Card was declined.”
“Can you look at that again? How do you know for sure?”
At this point, I didn’t care if it was being monitored or not. “Ma’am, why would I lie to you? What purpose do I have, to tell you, that the card was declined or accepted?”
“Lets do the card again, I think you entered it wrong.”
After three times, and reviewing exactly the SAME thing, all three times, she still was not convinced I was doing it right.
“I want to speak to your supervisor.”
This time, I had it. “Alla, you aren’t listening to me. We have tried this card, three times, I have repeated it back to you, three times, and you STILL insist, I’m doing something wrong. I wouldn’t be able to PROCESS the card, if it wasn’t right. I don’t know WHY we are unable to access funds. Maybe you should go back to your client, and have them contact the bank.”
“Can you contact the bank?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not my card.”
“Then why is it declining?”
“I don’t know. It says decline. It could mean, over the limit, closed account, etc.”
“Does it say that?”
“No, but its an assumption. We do not know WHY it is not accepting. Have your client contact their bank.”
After a run around of five minutes, one is so inclined to tell the other to fly a kite in a thunderstorm. It baffles me, when someone is processing a credit card, the person who is processing it, MUST be doing something wrong.
I had to be ever so lucky.
When you are wishing there IS a hidden camera, there isn’t.
