Don't go to Gagmart ever again. Bad bad place. They mutilate the landscape,treat their employees like dirt,put mom and pop places out of business and embarrass sweet southern women at the cash registers. They are the work of the Devil.

What fun. You probably got the same treatment from her she gets from the company. I will say, however, that the last time I made my annual visit to the similar, notorious but heavily patronized Walton Mart for a particular item I was able to find a clerk right away who walked all the way to the back to get me the case of them I was looking for, thus saving me from having to gather together 12 of the individual packages off of the shelf. Was quickly able to find a checkout without a long line and complete my business, too.

I did pay cash. When I've had a card not read when swiped the strip had become worn.

Boxmart mentality. Years ago, before I dumped my stock in one of them, I bought two sets of everyday dishes. I disovered one plate was broken when I got them home. I know there are two more boxes of sets on the shelf at the store, so I drive back with my receipt and the broken plate. I tell them I don't want to return the whole set, just replace that one plate, please. Ohhhhh Noooooo. We can't do that! Why not, says I? Take a plate out of one of the good sets and send that set back with this broken plate in it to the vendor as damaged. Oh nooooo you have to bring back the whole set and and return that. I walk to where the two sets of dishes sit on the store shelf, to see if they are all intact first.....thankfully before I drive to retrieve the rest of the set, and in each box, there is one broken plate. I say.....listen. All your sets are defective. I can bring mine back and you can return all three to the vendor, or you can give me one danged good plate and sell a set and only return two. It took me twenty minutes to convince the floor manager to do it that way and save us both time and make the company some money by getting rid of at least one of their damaged sets. I don't think she was convinced, but I was just insistant and outlasted her. That place is just a distant memory now.....I don't shop there anymore.

If it was Visa's problem, don't blame the store (except maybe for the clerk who was pretty rude). This time of the year, especially three days before Christmas, teh credit card computer systems are just about on tilt.

I remember at my first job after college, I was working in teh buying offices of Sears & the big Woodfield Mall had just opened outside of Chicago. It wass the first Sears store (and maybe the first store anywhere) to have electronic point of sale cash registers. We were making a sort of field trip during the Christmas season to view them in action & the day we were in that store the whole darn system crashed & when it crashed all teh registers completely locked up - literally. A special key had to be used to get to the cash drawers. Talk about pandemonium! Everyone had to hand write sales tickets & cash purchases had to go to only three register in teh whole store. After the store closed some poor little drones had to manually enter all teh day's sales into the system.

We've come a long way since 1971, but the machines still groan under super heavy loads.

We haven't come that far since 1971, I was at Safeway last summer and the system crashed so no one was able to check out their food, the lines got really long. The store didn't want everyone to leave their shopping carts so they passed cookies out to everyone in line. The wait continued they passed out water to everyone in line, it became a real got milk? moment. Carts were left in mass. I've worked in stores too long and just couldn't do it by the time they got back on line I was first in line.

Two years ago I bought a TV at W Mart, they had you pay for it at the electronic dept. I also bought a vcr and tapes, paied the whole thing on a credit card. As we were leaving the store two young male security guards tackled my dh and hit the cart so hard the TV fell off. I made an amazing recovery and caught it. The clerk at the electronic dept. didn't put a paied sticker on the TV. They were holding us inspite of the recept and the credit card slip. The woman we bought the stuff from just happened to walk by on her way to lunch, my dh told the guards and other people who were holding us, she was the person we bought the TV from. She said that we had paied for it and she must have forgotten to put the sticker on it. Afterward I wished I let the TV fall to the floor and my dh has a heart condition, I wish he complained about pain because the guards used force.

The Mart near me requires the customer to put in the zip code on the credit card machine. I keyed mine in (American Express) apparently made a mistake, but didn't notice it. It refused my card. I had another card and it went through just fine.
A couple of days later, AMEX sent me a nice letter checking to see if someone had been trying to use my card or if I had just made a mistake keying in the zip. It's nice to know that they check on things like that.

AMEX is very vigilant about the use of their cards. When we were moving here from Dallas we had to but a new washer & dryer. Of course we decided to do it the day we were closing & had very little time. I knew just what we wanted & probably made one of the fastest major appliance purchases that the sales person ever had had. When we went to check out I was using my AMEX, but it popped up that the cashier would have to call the charge in. I didn't have time for that & used my Visa instead.

The next day I called AMEX & they said that it was such a large amount of money & so different from my buying patterns of the past two years, that the system automatically popped up teh check to make sure that someone hadn't stolen the card.

AMEX seems to be very careful. We were in a big hurry one day, the DH dropped me off at the drug store to pick up a prescription, he went about 1/2 block to gas the car while I walked next door to pick up a few groceries. Used AMEX for all three purchases. The phone was ringing when we got home.( about five minutes after the last charge) They were just checking to see that everything was OK. Even though they were small amounts, they were so close together that it triggered the watch dogs.

It wasn't Visa, it was the store.

We have Visa and they sure saved our behind when we went
out to Oregon a few years back. Visa called to tell us that
someone had used our credit card number to try and buy
several thousand dollars of merchandise at Best Buy.
They also said that there was a request for an address change.
We had no clue because the cards hadn't been stolen.
It was time consuming and sometimes frustrating to check all
the credit reports and cancel all our accounts, but thanks
to Visa that was all I had to do.
Identity theft is such big business now that insurance
companies are selling policies to help expenses if your
identity is stolen.

I try to let them know when we go on vacation so they will
know to expect charges in and around the area.
They also know that we wouldn't buy big ticket items like
Big Screen TVs etc.
It's a little scary to think that a company knows your
habits well enough to predict what you have and have not
bought.