Complaint Review: FIA Card Services - Select State/Province

I have had various credit cards services by FIA Card Services for almost 10 years. Most of my transactions over the last five years have been thru my Fidelity AMEX and my Fidelity VISA, both of which are serviced by FIA. I charge about $40,000 to $50,000 per year and always pay my balance on time. 

What you need to know is this: you absolutely cannot depend on FIA Card Services. You MUST have an alternate card serviced by someone other than FIA. 

Here is why: 

1) I made the mistake over and over again of linking recurring payments to my Fidelity cards - I have 20 or 30 of these recurring links active at all times. Twice in the last five years FIA has cancelled my card due to "Merchant Compromise." When this happens, FIA doesn't call you. You just get a new card in the mail and one to two weeks to drop everything you are doing, log in or call all of your linked accounts, and change the credit card number. When you call FIA, they absolutely will not tell you anything about the "compromise" - your card is cancelled, goodbye. 

2) FIA's fraud algorithm absolutely stinks (I've owned and IT business for over two decades). Once or twice a year I have been standing in lines at grocery stores, at gas pumps in the middle of the night trying to buy gas, and found my card was declined. No call from FIA - your card is just declined. I call FIA (the number on the back of the card), wait five to ten minutes, talk to a customer services rep who then has to refer me to the fraud department, and finally get it straightened out. This year I was declined because I went to a gas station where I always fill up and then to a grocery store where I always get my groceries and FIA told me that their fraud detection software had some sort of problem with that particular combination of transactions. I am a cancer patient who travels from my home town to a distant cancer center several times a year. I always pick the biggest truck/auto stops for fuel - usually Love's. Typically, somewhere in the middle of my trip, my card will be declined. I have to call FIA to get it straightened out. Once, last year, it was 3AM, my card was declined, FIA's computer systems were down, and I had to wait three hours in the middle of nowhere waiting for FIA's computers to get back up so I could get gas and continue my trip. 

3) FIA customer service is among the worst I have ever experienced. I used to run a customer service operation for a very large corporation, so I have some experience with this. It is not uncommon to find yourself dealing with a FIA customer service rep who, in my personal opinion, absolutely should not be in a customer-facing position of any sort. Particularly problematic are the personnel who staff the fraud department (who you will be dealing with on a regular basis if you use an FIA serviced credit card due to the fact that their fraud algorithm is so flakey). 

4) Finally, if you use Quicken to track your credit card transactions you are going to have to manually download your transactions into Quicken each month because FIA has no way to automatically link Quicken to their website. That's a real bother in my opinion, particularly with the volume of transactions I deal with on a monthly basis. 

Bottom line: After about a decade of dealing with FIA, I have finally decided that I cannot continue using any credit card that is serviced by them (they just cancelled my card again due to another "merchant compromise"). Earlier this year, I switched one of my Fidelity VISAs to Chase Slate. I am now giving up my Fidelity AMEX and another Fidelity VISA and switching these as well. While some of these cards have some good benefits (2% cash back on the Fidelity AMEX for instance), the hassle of trying to deal with FIA just isn't worth it.