DECLINED-DECLINED-DECLINED

“...I never knew you: depart from me, ...” (from Matthew 7:23)

I know the above verse is talking about false prophets being thrown into Hell at the last judgment.  That’s NOT what this posting is about, but I felt those words were fitting for how you feel when a perfectly good credit or debit card is “declined”.  My son hates the whole modern world of credit cards, checks, and so forth (although at least a year ago he broke down and opened a checking account).  Jon would rather that everybody just carried around large wads of cash on their person (and guns for protection).  He thinks that’s a whole lot more real an honest.  In many respects, I’m not far from Jon in my own thinking.  My late father used only cash and money orders.  My MOM did have checks and a credit card for emergencies, so maybe he was “cheating” but I try to use cash as much as possible and I like it better that way.  Now, this whole thing of BUYING stuff on-line:  for the most part I don’t like it. (Admittedly, the last few times I’ve flown my wife bought the tickets on-line, so maybe I’m sort of cheating like my Dad did.)

The above was just an introduction for my latest “I can’t believe this” story.  About a year ago, the church set up a simple website on-line.  Despite the fact that I have a blog, I’m really not very technically inclined at all.  I’ve done very little to maintain or update the website, but at least our church has a presence on the internet.  In order to have a website, we first had to register a domain name .  Last year, I went to the site of an “outfit” (or is it a “company” or a “corporation” or WHAT is it?!) to register a domain name.  At that time, the church had a checking account but did not have a credit or debit card.  I had to use the VISA debit card from my own checking account to secure the domain name.  I really DIDN’T like the idea of using my own debit card and my own name, etc. but it was the only way I could do that.

Within a few weeks of that situation happening I talked to our Board about the importance of our church at least having a debit card connected to the checking account.  We applied for a debit card and received (I think) 3 cards for myself and two officers of the church.  I went to an ATM and “activated” my card for future usage.  Several months ago, our church’s men’s group decided to sponsor a child in a third world country through World Vision.  We decided we collect money for this each month at our meetings, but to make things easier, we’d just set it up using the debit card for automatic withdrawals every month to  support the kid.  WELL, I started getting letters from World Vision saying the card had been declined.  This happened several times, and it was VERY embarrassing!  I ended up going to our bank.  It seems the bank has a security rule that the address on file of the card owner has to match the address the card owner has given the merchant or the card will be declined.  BOY, IT WAS NICE OF THE BANK TO TELL ME, WASN’T IT?  World Vision had my personal address and it did not match the church’s address....I got things all straightened out between the bank and World Vision.

A few days ago, my wife ordered some Christian Education materials through a publishing house and used the church debit card.  Guess what?  It was declined.  Once again, it was the whole address thing.  We do not use the church address as our shipping address, so the addresses did not match.  My wife was able to call the publisher’s toll free number and get the matter straightened out.  Also, a few days ago, I received an e-mail reminder from the domain name outfit or company or whatever that the church’s domain name was going to expire soon and I needed to go to their site to renew it.  Well, the whole  reason I got the church debit card in the first place was for stuff like this, and I really didn’t want to be using my personal name and information for the church’s domain name registration, SO I went to the outfits site, entered my password and other security info. and went through the on-line procedure to reregister.  The card was declined.  I went through the procedure again.  The card was declined again.  This time there was a warning telling me if I was declined again I would be “locked out of my account”!  I then had to go through a bunch of on-line hoops to find customer service.  Was there a toll-free number where I could talk to someone (like my wife with the  publishing house)?  NO!  The on-line registration outfit and I exchanged several e-mails.  I ultimately received a reply from them saying their billing is by a “third party” and essentially “sorry there’s nothing we can do”!  I was totally disgusted and wishing I was living back in 1964.  I know, there were no personal computers or blogs or websites in 1964!  (And, was that such a bad thing?!)

Finally, I went on-line yesterday.  I used my personal debit card and information and reregistered the church domain name.  One thing I wonder is, what happens someday when I’m no longer the pastor of the church?  How do they secure the domain name then? And, the whole point of getting the church a debit card was to MAKE THINGS EASIER.  I think the local bank’s policy of addresses matching exactly for security purposes is STUPID.  What bank is is?  All I will tell you is, it starts with an “F”.