Viewsonic sucks. MBNA rocks.

Hm. My credit card was declined for the first time today. Odd. I always pay it off every month, and have a ridiculous credit line (almost half my yearly salary... yeah, as if I would buy a car and put it on my card).

Anyway, I got on the phone. Turns out their fraud detector was tripped. Interesting. The automated system starts listing off the problematic charges. Ok, the first one is fine. Um... no, I don't recognise those other four attempted today *at all*. So I press no, and am connected to a human.

Turns out that all five are from Viewsonic (I placed an order with them yesterday). I told the rep that one of them is fine (dollar amount matches my order), but the other four (one charge and three authorisations) are wrong. She quickly removes all of them, reactivates my card, makes a note on Viewsonic's file, and tells me to contact Viewsonic.

So I give them a call. First, I'm on hold forever. Then the guy who answers is a tad rude, and clearly doesn't believe me. He also insists that the billing attempts were accurate and standard practice. Finally, he tells me that the item I had ordered isn't even in stock.

After some arguing, I gave up and left it at that. If they're going to make it that hard for me to spend my money, I'll just take it elsewhere.

Kudos, though, to the AI fraud detection system that MBNA has in place. It zapped all of the suspicious charges before they could reach my account, saving me much headache later on.