WWTBAM Bored

Was finally getting around to my annual donations, and was doing them online. After a dozen of my favorite charities (spread the wealth), my credit card company stopped accepting the card. Not anywhere near my limit, so I suspect just too many transactions in too short a time. I'll start again later, or tomorrow, and call them if it still won't go through.

There are worse reasons to have your credit card rejected ...

Not many people are so generous it causes their credit card company to become suspicious. You're a good guy. (Or gal. I don't know you that well.)

Oddly enough, charities and non-profit organizations are among the entities that are at the top of the list for potential money laundering. Most charities, and I am sure 100% of the ones that you are working with, are not involved with anything inappropriate, but the 'risk' is there, and it is possible that you credit card company's AML triggers were, um, triggered when you started sending money to a lot of 'high risk' groups. You will probably have to check in with the company to get that block unblocked.

A similar thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Within the space of about two hours, a couple of on-line orders to businesses on different sides of the country were followed by purchases at WalMart and the local Apple Store for an i-tunes gift card. I got an e-mail purporting to be from the "credit fraud unit" of an unnamed bank, let's call it the Bank of North America, about suspicious purchases. I thought the e-mail was a fraud. I called the customer service number, where the nice representative said, "Oh, that really was us," and proceeded to tell me every purchase made on the card in the previous week, and everywhere that approval was "pending," meaning they were waiting for me to say, "Oh, that really was me!"

I blame the i-tunes card.

My parents credit card cuts them off after a certain number of purchases per day. I forget the number of purchases. They only made that many on one day once since they have had the card.