Story About Credit Card Protection

I have a personal story to share that helps to illustrate the point I have been trying to make lately – that credit cards provide you with a greater deal of purchase protection than debit cards and, therefore, I don’t understand why so many people are choosing to use debit cards instead which simply don’t offer a similar level of protection instead.

Recently, a friend of mine had to take a business trip to San Francisco from Indiana. He is not the most technologically astute person, but he attempted to make his flight reservations online. Well, as it turns out, he actually bought two round trip tickets rather than just one. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize this until he got to the airport and was ready to board the plane.

My friend talked to the airlines and they basically told him “You bought two tickets and now you are stuck with them.” They told him to take it up with the online travel agency where he purchased the ticket(s). As he told me this story, however, I told him to just call his credit card company.

As it turns out, he had purchased the ticket with his American Express card.  American Express has a great customer service reputation, which made me even more adamant that he call his card and try to resolve the problem in that way.

Well, as it turns out, the customer representative was very friendly and helpful. She also told him that he didn’t have to worry about paying for that ticket. When he returned home only two days later, the airline no longer had two tickets for him – that’s how quickly American Express took care of that issue.

If my friend would have purchased that ticket with a debit card, the money most likely would have already been gone from his account. This would have left him with no leverage and it would have been a lot tougher for him to get his money back. When I had to get money back from the same airline after my flight was canceled, it took months before I got my money back.

Credit card purchase protection provides a pretty adequate level of insurance as a consumer – use it and take advantage of the benefits.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.