I continue to pack. She holds on the phone with Visa. Suddenly the answer is there: card has been frozen because of suspicious tiny transactions. One for thirty cents, one for forty-five. Just the kind of "probing" charge that credit card thieves attempt to see if a card number is good -- and that, for the same reasons, credit card companies block.
But wait a minute. These charges -- shown below -- were for the fifteen-cent conversion fees that Amazon charges when you mail it a .PDF or .DOC file to be sent to your Kindle. I was sending several files so I could read them on the plane. (The $1.25 charge is for my monthly Kindle version of the world's finest magazine -- better on paper, but this is a nice backup.) You can get files converted for the Kindle for free, but it means manually transferring them via your computer. I thought it was worth the seventy-five cents to skip that phase.
I can't be the first person to use a credit card for tiny Kindle charges. Maybe a little coordination to be worked out here, guys? Another opportunity for the Nook?
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/10/maybe-amazon-and-visa-should-talk/29030/
