Yesterday, I arrived in France with location services enabled. The card was authorised, then declined at the next stop, then authorised again twice at later stops, all in one day. The reason given for the decline was that it was done by location services. Support advised me to turn location services off, maybe just before making a transaction.
I’m now a little confused about the location services feature. When should I enable it and when should I disable it?
I have it enabled all the time when I know that I will have cellphone data on my phone. I also make sure to log in to a couple of local WIFIs where I don’t have cellphone roaming activated abroad. I then will use the app once or twice. I have the idea that this will update the location based security informations to make it work. So far it worked well for me.
Maybe reliability is different between platforms? I am on iOS, and honestly, I don’t have problems at all with that feature. I travel frequently between UK, France, Germany.
This may be the point. Maybe it’s used to your travel pattern.
I use iOS too. Another thing I realised yesterday is that my phone was down to 1% charge when the transaction declined, so maybe the phone was giving out incomplete data through lack of charge. Later it was out of charge altogether; maybe that’s why the later transactions were authorised. 
Yes, iOS reduces the use of WIFI and GPS when the battery is low, I can see how this affects this.