Just so sad
 

Well I'm finally here in Yuma. Was so looking forward to shopping online & no shipping. Just tried to get some of that $1.99 a yard flannel at Joannes. Shucks they won't accept my Canadian Amer. Express. How do other Canadians shop there.

I think I would go to a Yuma bank and see if they can point you in the right direction. Sorry you are having this problem.

Call American Express!

Good luck!!

It's Joannes program, it won't accept our Postal code. We have 6 digits. Will call them tomorrow, they are not open today. I was just wanting to take advantage of their sale. I'm telling myself that it was probably not a very good quality flannel for $1.99 anyway. grin.

It is good quality flannel. If you have a debit/credit card from an American bank you can order from Joann'e. They won't accept Canadian credit cards & no longer ship to Canada.

Gail B. is correct - Jo-Ann's won't accept a canadian credit card, even if you're shipping to a US address. I ended up being lucky and able to use my husband's. That being said, pretty well every convenience type store (Wal-Mart, drug stores, gas stations) have Visa gift cards that Jo-Ann's will apparently accept, at least according to the CSR I talked to. You also might go to a real jo-ann's, buy one of their gift cards, and use that online. (This is a problem at a LOT of smaller US chains. As far as I can figure out, one of the companies that a LOT of them used for CC processing decided on this rule, and that it wasn't something necessarily preferred by Jo-Anns themselves.)

Monday is also a free shipping day, no minimum purchase. Just google Joanns and you should see the cyber Monday specials. Flannels are still 1.99/yd. http://www.joann.com/joann/home/home.jsp

credit card
 

We had the same problem in Canada with American Express......We contacted them and all was fine after that.

Thank you for this info. Seems that is a poor business option, as thousands of Canadians come here to Az. each winter. This is our 5th. year & my first time having this problem. I can surely understand not shipping to Canada. Wish they would do paypal.

I have had far better success using the prepaid Visa from Safeway, than the one I had from Wal-Mart. Few places took my prepaid Wal-mart card. Haven't had any problems at all with the Safeway one.

That is really silly on their part- turning away business. My guess is that they either have to pay a bigger commission on foreign cards or else they have to pay more to verify details of non-us cardholders. Do they accept other credit cards (MasterCard etc)?

Yuma Arizona???

A lot of stores don't accept ANY Amerucan Express cards, American or not. I think I heard that the fees for merchants were very high, or something similar , that merchants opted to not accept the cards. This could be the case at Joann's rather than your card being Canadian.

I used to live in Yuma when DH was stationed @ MCAS Yuma (Marine Corps Air Station). I've heard its grown a lot since 1979.
Sharon W.

Yes, Yuma Az. They do accept American Express in their store, I've used it no problem. Seems to be only on-line. I did e-mail them, no answer. Oh well the sale is over & I saved a bundle. LOL.

Definitely call American Express. I always had to call them when I was traveling outside the US to use my US issued card. It's one of the ways they minimize fraud. Pain in the neck but...

It's not really an Amex issue, rather a vendor policy that will be stopping the use of the card. As someone said, many vendors do not accept Amex. Just as some will not accept MC and yet might have Visa, etc.

So the issue is with Joanne's. If they choose to do their business that way, that's their choice.
Perhaps this is the first time you've run into this issue, though keep in mind, Joanne's is NOT the only one that will not accept Canadian cards for doing business in the USA. Just as the other poster mentioned their USA card not being accepted here in Canada.

From what I've been able to glean, it's mostly the CC Processor that's the problem. It's an extra feature, and not every credit card processor offers it. Moreover, it's something that processors can change - they can, midstream, decide not to provide that feature (which appears to be what happened with JA - I was told that they used to be able to do it.) So while it's not strictly Jo-Ann's fault - they didn't make the decision themselves out of spite or something - it is their fault in that they continue to use the same processor, when there are others they could choose to switch to instead.

IMHO it's not that JoAnne's wants to discourage business from Canadians, as much as it is that they want to minimize the risk of fraudulent transactions. With card-not-present transactions, such as mail order / phone order / online purchases, the risk of a customer using a stolen card is much higher than in person. Here's a link to read: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2216470,00.asp ... The rate of fraud on international transactions is apparently almost triple the rate for domestic sales.

What happens when there's a fraudulent transaction? As a merchant who has been stung this way several times, I can tell you... the cardholder wins, and the merchant loses. Not only does the merchant lose the merchandise, and the shipping cost, and the money, the merchant also has to pay a fee of $25 or so. If this happens too many times, the merchant's reputation with the bank gets damaged, and then the merchant has to pay a larger fee each time they process a credit card.

Apparently the owners of JoAnns have decided that the risk is not worth the reward. We can disagree, but as the business owners, it's really entirely their call.

In my store, we do sell internationally, but only to certain countries, and we fraud-screen all of our orders. One rule we do stand firm on is that a customer cannot order from country A, and ask for us to ship it to country B. The only exception we make is for Canadian or Mexican customers who want to ship to a border state; we understand that many people have mailboxes in border towns, and come across periodically to collect their mail and packages.

It's also worth mentioning that some card-issuing banks have rules set in place that do not allow for, say, a German credit card to be used outside of Europe. In this case, such a credit card purchase is declined by the card-issuing bank, and not by the merchant. So if anyone from outside the US is trying to make a purchase online with a card that they know is good, and has funds, they should call their card-issuing bank to see if they can correct the problem.

I think that is awful and i think we should all write to Joannes and TELLL them it is awful....Canada is our first cousin our very loved first cousin!!!!!!!!!!

Well said!!!

Hi True4uca That is so strange, my girlfriend has a card like that and she shops all over in AZ. I bet her husband would like to find a way to make it not work. LOL He always teases her about it.

I don't use AE, but I used my VISA and Discover cards all over France, Germany, and Holland, with absolutely no problem and no questions. It was amazing. I think I'd check with AE and see what the problem is. How disappointing that you couldn't get your fabric!

u might buy a one timecredit card if they a walmart or somewhere they sell them u load it with however much u wanna spend here in ms. walmart only charge u 3 dollars i use them all the time. when buying on internet. no chance of anybody geting my info

Yep, this. Many American processors and gateways do not handle Canadian or other non-US credit card transactions because the laws regarding credit card security are more strict (better) than they are in the US. Processors and gateways that make the effort to comply with international laws (which do differ from country to country) and potential tax issues do charge a premium for the service. Thus the cost to the retailer might be MUCH higher, and if the retailer pushes through millions of transactions and only a small percentage of them are international they aren't recouping the cost of processing domestic charges through an internationally-equipped processor at the international rate.

But the pre-paid Visa idea is a great one, for future visits!

Replying to my own post here (tacky, I know), the cost per transaction can be higher by as much as a dollar - a dollar! One dollar for each transaction times millions of transactions...

It's a big deal.