Visa Card adventure

On Sunday, March 8, my husband and I experienced one of the most bizarre telephone conversations with the Visa Approval Service in Jakarta. Following our decision to purchase some furniture from a furniture shop in South Jakarta, my husband presented the shop with his Visa Gold "preferred customer" Card. The store, not being electronically linked to approval service, called the Visa Approval Service.

After several minutes on the phone, the storekeeper returned to us requesting my husband's passport number. Figuring that this may have had something to do with the monetary crisis and bad debts etc., my husband gave his passport number under the assumption the transaction would now be completed. However, another few minutes passed without a resolution.

Mr. Audi of the Visa Approval Service asked whether my husband was a tourist or working here in Jakarta, our home phone number and address and proceeded to inform me that the transaction would take approximately two months to process.

Finally, we were able to connect to another Visa operator who, in less than 60 seconds, gave approval on the transaction -- as we had expected during our first call.

I would love to receive an explanation from Visa on the above occurrence.

M. JULIANI

Jakarta