Consumer complaint received 2016-03-15
Company: BARCLAYS BANK DELAWARE
State: CA
Product: Credit card
Issue: Customer service / Customer relations

Complaint:
My Barclaycard XXXX with XXXX Rewards was activated on XXXX XXXX. I was able to use my card without issues aside from a few false positive fraudulent activity alerts on my account but was able to clear up the holds with a phone call. There was actually a transaction where my card was declined and I had called in to Barclaycard to confirm I recognized the transactions, and was told to make the purchase again with assurance that this time it would go through. I was satisfied with the confidence the customer care representative had given me and the call ended there. I was preparing for a travel XXXX, so I did not actually attempt to make the purchase immediately after the call had ended, but rather a few days later. Unfortunately, it was declined yet again, and another false positive fraudulent activity alert was sent to me via email. 
Setting this matter aside for the time being, I took my flight to the XXXX and about XXXX hours later I arrived. I had booked a taxi using an application called XXXX which I used for the first time ever and probably never will again due to an incident I had with the driver ordering us to get out of the vehicle after he had already picked us up. I had wondered if it was due to my card but since I had not received anything from Barclaycard and XXXX claiming that I had not been charged, I assumed that was n't the case. The next day, I did receive an email from Barclaycard on a possible fraudulent activity alert on a charge of a approximately {$2.00}. I called in to verify the transaction on the toll free intentional number and confirmed I had recognized the charges and informed her I was traveling. The customer care rep then removed the hold on the account, offered me to sign up for text notification alerts which I did and asked her if it was too late to place a travel notification on the account. She said she would go ahead and do that, and I believe she did try however upon doing so, she told me that she had to transfer me to another department who had then placed the security hold back on my account. Now they are telling me that I need to mail in documentation through XXXX mail to their XXXX in the United States before the hold can be removed and someone had even placed notes on the account claiming they had asked this of me long ago, and that the Barclaycard reps that removed the holds from my account several times prior to this, were all in error and were never supposed to have done that. Well that sounds extremely out of the ordinary to me and if any of the activity done on my account seemed anything close to possibly being fraudulent, it was n't on my end. I do realize that I should have placed a travel alert notification but I had forgot to mention earlier that after the possible fraudulent activity alert on the transaction that I was assured would go through, the travel notification online was no longer an option because of that alert. They 've now locked me out of my online account access, and though they have a toll free number on their site which states IN CASE OF EMERGENCY XXXX to call the number listed, after calling that number I was disappointed to see how poorly they treat their clients even though I had explained to them that I was XXXX and was counting on this card to be my backup funding source since it 's supposed to be safer than carrying cash around. I looked to their Complaint policy statement and called the number listed for submitting complaints but upon calling that it turned out to redirect my call to another department to deliberately prevent me from being able to complain about this to Barclaycard. As if this all is n't enough to complain about. I had read a few stories on XXXX of holiday nightmares due to credit card declines but nothing that could n't be resolved with a phone call to their card issuer. I am being deprived of a fair resolution.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation