Using credit/debit cards abroad - do this before you travel

just sundays? lol i spent a month in southern france and most petrol stations were unmanned and pretty much all village shops/tabac’s seemed to be always closed…lazy barstewards

i’ll be taking duty free to europe for milau lol saves getting stuck with nothing to smoke (if i have time to with all the riding:D)

If anyone’s with Santander, their Zero credit card only lets you register to three countries at any time!!!

I’ve always informed my bank before I’ve went abroad and my bank have kindly cancelled my card every single time I’ve travelled despite this, drives me bloody mad as it often takes a £20 phone call back to the uk to sort it out. Worst thing is when you phone the number on the card and they take all your details, then say “we’re just going to pass you onto the fraud department” who then proceed to go through all the same details again which takes ages.

You are a legal beagle you should know better.

It is not your cash. It is their money. You gave it to them. You didn’t put your money in an account. You gave the bank your money, to do with as they please.

They promised to give you back similar amounts money whenever you asked, so yeah you have a legitimate claim to say they failed in their promise, their side of the bargain, but it isn’t your cash.

The unmanned stations on our recent trip all took cash too, but worth having a credit card as back up I guess.

Something to be aware of if you use your card at a petrol station is that the petrol station will temporarily ‘grab’ an amount equal to their limit (usually 120E) from your account each time you fill up and it takes alot longer than it does in the UK to give it back (they don’t actually take it, the 120E is put aside but you cannot use it).
Happened to a mate in France who had a Euro card (temporary debit card which you pay for before travelling). When he filled up at a manned petrol station the assistant said the card was being rejected, so that evening he phoned the card issuer only to be told that his 2 most recent transactions were both for 120E each which had left his card empty (this was now our last night in France). He was fuming, thinking his card had been cloned but then I remembered the same thing had happened to me in the UK once where they had been slow to update the transaction.

I was being rhetorical

I take cash for most purchases but also have got a couple of the PRE PAID credit cards that you charge up with cash before you go away that saves your main bank account getting cloned also you tend to pay more attention to what you spend so it doesn’t run out, but at least you dont get huge credit card bill when back in UK

You’re not with Santander, are you?

+1 on that.

I’m with barclays and I always do it online 7 days before I depart to another country.

Me too, but have never informed them of my travels and have never had any problems with either Debit or Credit cards:)

No. Lloyds TSB

You may not have had in the past - but this is a new thing - hence the warning:)

I’m with Barclays and have had problems accessing my cash in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Rwanda, Dubai, Mongolia and various other places, even when I have actually told them in person and by letter I was going there.

They have got better recently - for example when I was last in Kabul I managed to get cash out twice at a machine Finest Supermarket (before it blew up) without any issues at all and also in Guernsey and Sark- absolutely no problems there either. No problems in Canada also.

It all just seems a bit ad hoc in my book - surely a system of both accessing cash whilst accommodating fraud prevention should be in place that works across the board, rather than only from time to time? It’s not at all unique to travel - it’s commonplace these days - so why such inefficient systems?