Chase

Downstairs in Family/Entertainment Room we have our old 50″ Samsung TV that came with us from Aiken. Since its arrival from the east coast it has started to develop some vertical lines on the far left side of the screen. We have been able to ignore them mostly, but they are now starting to get on both our nerves.

It is Christmastime, so we thought maybe we should give ourselves a present of a new TV that has a nice complete picture. There are only a couple of places in town where you can buy a TV, but that is not really helpful as they would be no way to transport it home, so I went online to see about getting something delivered. Found a sweet Samsung 50″ UHD on Best Buy for $379. The best part is free shipping with arrival early next week. I was going to bump up the size to 55″ for $20 more, but the free shipping changed to $190!

I stuck the TV in my cart and headed to checkout. I filled out the requested personal info, entered my charge card info and hit the buy button. I got a screen telling me they couldn’t process my card and I should try another one. Thinking I may have entered the number wrong, entered a “new” card. Really the same one, but I made sure I double checked that everything was correct. This time when I hit Buy, I got a confirmation saying my order was placed.

About then I heard a couple of notification beeps on the phone. I figured it was Best Buy because I had signed up for order/delivery texts. I was right, there was one from Best Buy, but there was also one from Chase, the Fraud Department. They had declined the charge. They wanted to know if it was me. I responded with Yes. Chase sent back another text saying that the transaction was not completed and I should ask the merchant to reprocess the transaction.

On the Best Buy website, it showed the order as in process, so I tried contacting Chase. Instead of waiting for a representative on the phone, I tried their chat bot. After 7 minutes, I got started chatting with Doris Brown (who I’m sure was actually Prisha Banerjee) who after asking a couple questions to ensure I was really Brian Bogardus (not Changying Zhao) before asking what my issue was. Then she said give me a few minutes to look into this. Couple minutes she returned to tell me that I needed to contact billing to get them to reprocess a transaction and gave me that 800 number.

I dialed the number and navigated through the menu and then I was informed that billing was closed. Fast forward to this morning. I went to Best Buy’s website and my order was still showing in process. I went to the Chase website and the charge showed as pending.

So, is Santa bringing us a TV for Christmas, who knows. This morning I called Chase again. This time it only took a few minutes before I got a Customer Service Representative, and after a couple of questions was told that the transaction was actually approved and everything is fine. We’ll see.