By Chris Bucholtz

Shockingly, this one’s not an airline fiasco, but it is related to travel. My wife and I are visiting the Middle East on vacation sometime soon, a region not terribly well know for its customer service. You’d think that we could soak up some CRM love while we’re still at home and use that to offset the wackiness bound to take place overseas. In getting our ducks in a row before visiting what is to us a somewhat unfamiliar part of the world, my wife casually called he credit card company to make sure things would go swimmingly when we tried to pay for things like hotels and rental cars.

The result: a series of calls to her credit union, her credit card company… and to me, at my desk here at Inside CRM. Most of the latter calls were prefaced with the phrase, “You’re not going to believe this.”

First, the credit card company’s call center said that our Visa could be used in Turkey, but any fraud resulting from its use would be our responsibility. Then, the call center for her credit union (the issuing institution for the Visa card) repeated that, and added that the most she could take out on the card was $400 on any one day – but she could call back the credit card company and ask for that to be changed.

That call was made and the initial claim was repeated. When the call was escalated to a supervisor, more conflicting information was given: the limit of $400 was for cash only, but the waiver of responsibility still held.

Finally, after three hours of back-and-forth calls, someone with some authority at the credit union – and the first one to be based in the U.S. – finally got on the line. “You have been given bad information, and I apologize,” the supervisor said. The true conditions: the card could be used as much as we wanted and, since we were letting the credit union know ahead of time where we would be, the fraud coverage still stood.

For reducing my wife to a seething wild woman, and for being unable to keep their own internal policies straight, I award USE Credit Union and Visa the second CRM Fiasco of the Week Award.