We notoriously have trouble with this when we are in Italy and use our cards from the US credit card company, Capital One. It takes just a few charges to get the cards locked down and is a major pain to fix from abroad. In fact, I think we gave up trying to get in touch with customer service until we returned home. I think they take the protection a bit too far, and we have sworn off using their cards while on trips.

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Capital One used to do that to me all the time when I went to Italy. I switched to other cards and never had the same issues.
Good tips!

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We had this happen once on a trip to Cambodia. Back when we visited, there were no ATMs there, and our credit card was our only source of money. Luckily we had forwarded our home phone to my parents house & they got the call from Visa.

We’ve had problems on and off in Italy too. We usually bring along a couple of different ATM cards and some US cash.

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Natwest have always been very good for this with me. The first time I used one of my cards abroad they phoned my home number and left a message asking me to call them regarding card usage abroad. Ever since then I always phone and inform them before travelling abroad.

It’s funny how everyone on Watchdog said they had got stranded and ran out of money etc. Personally I think they should have planned better. Take more than one card, cash, travellers cheques! And don’t they take their banks contact details with them in case of an emergency?! That’s just common sense!

I wonder how those people who complained would’ve felt if their card wasn’t blocked, and money got taken fraudulently – no doubt it would have gone full circle and they’d be blaming the companies for not realising it was a fraud.

It needs to be looked at from both sides. Fraud is on the increase and customers need to take as much responsibility as the banks.

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Darren,

I have had it happen the other way, I went to the USA and 4 days before I was due home my card was frozen. Turns out when I got back and saw my statement some one had cloned the card and run up over £2000 of charges (most after the card was frozen!!) the bank went though these with me and removed all the ones that had not come from the state I was in without a problem.

It would have been if a problem at the time and if I had not been with my fiancée at the time I would have been in trouble.

Also LloydsTSB had a new card on my door mat when I got back. How ever this was a few years ago.

The other idea now is to of course take a Travel money card which is not connected to any other account details.

Nick

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My situation is “reverse”: I’m an expat living in Spain, and when I went to visit my parents last Christmas, my Spanish cards were completely blocked for > 2 weeks.

The problem began when I tried to buy a Macbook online. My Spanish bank accounts are with: ING (a Dutch bank) and Banco Santander. It took many overseas phone calls in the middle of the night to clear up the issue. Retailers may be asked to fax your bank (internationally) with a copy of the signed receipts. My banks would not accept my copy, nor do I use fax machines in the digital age.

I had advised Banco Santander of my vacation and pending usage of my credit card overseas, including changing my billing address to one in the US. This helped when trying to unblock the cards. Unfortunately, ING’s system is totally automatic, according to their customer service. They could not manually unblock the card, and charges on my ING card remained blocked until I went back to Spain, following the normal billing cycle.

It’s the first time that I have had multiple cards blocked on the same trip.

My conclusion: banks are not really global enterprises and have gotten more restrictive in their consumer policies, failing to adapt to our current digital / international economy. I don’t have experience in the internal organization and politics of banks; therefore if there are any bankers reading this post, I’d love to hear your comments.

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Great tips Darren.

We were only speaking about this at work the other day.

Most of my work colleagues do not contact their bank but I sent them to this article.

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I’ve never had a problem with Capital One (US) — I call them 3 or 4 days ahead of a foreign trip, ask for the fraud department, and advise them of the dates of my trip, and all is clear. That’s important, since they’re pretty much the last US credit card issuer left not to charge any additional fees over the mandatory Visa 1% on foreign currency transactions.

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Get an AMEX card. There are AMEX offices in major cities throughout Europe. Contact AMEX before going to Italy because theft of card information happens at restaurants and hotels. Traveler’s cheques. Euros. Get some before you leave the US. If you plan to attend events: tours through Vatican catacombs, art exhibits, concerts . . . you can buy the tickets on-line (for example at Charta-It for Italy) and have them waiting at will-call. It works!

Let AMEX know where you’re going and not to authorize computer, electronics, or photo equipment since these are cheaper usually in the US. VAT not included! You can go into any internet cafe and check your on-line credit accounts for unauthorized charges while abroad.

Also, be very careful to check immediately upon return for charges made after your departure for home.

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I bank with Washington Mutual. I am currently on a 6-month trip in China. I made sure to inform them before leaving the United states that I would be in China. 3-days before I was going to leave for a trip to Beijing to pick up my brother.
I tried to access my account online and I got a message saying that my account was locked and to call their customer service. I called and they informed me that my account had been compromised and that they put a hold in order to protect me. My money is all kept in an ING Direct savings account, but when I need money, I will transfer it to my Washington Mutual account so I can get it out.
They informed me that someone MIGHT have my information and they wanted to open a new account for me and close the old account. I told them that this would be fine, but ONLY if I could keep my old debit card and have it transferred to the new account. They agreed. I applied for a new account online as instructed, and did everything correct on my end. But when I called back, I was told that they had canceled my card, and that once canceled, it could not be re-opened.
That night, I spent 5 hours on the phone, on an international call, using skpye. I received so many different answers, spoke with at least 20 different people in at least 5 different departments. I slept at 5am china time. I was finally assured that everything was going to work and within 48 hours, the new card would be active with the new account. What else could I do but trust them.
In Beijing I tried to take out money. Of course it did not work. I had to finance the rest of my trip by borrowing from my brother.
Lucky for me, I have another account with another bank. I set this other bank to work with my ING Direct account, and after another week everything was working fine.
But for my Washington Mutual account, its still sitting dead in the water. I still cannot understand how they can do something like that to people. In trying to protect me, they messed me up. Do consumers have protection against this kind of incompetence?

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It happened to me recently with my Lloyds Air Miles Duo cards. On the last day of my holiday, I tried to pay the hotel bill and both the Amex and Mastercard were blocked, with no request to the hotel to contact them. It looked like I was someone with bad credit. The bank has even now told me that they have withdrawn the practice of not blocking your card if you contact them before going abroad, as they are still experiencing fraud. So, if you go abroad and try to use your credit card, expect it to be blocked from now on, as going on holiday abroad is obviously a suspicious activity, even if, like me, you paid for your flights and withdrew Euros with that same bank before you left. What more information do they need? Oh, and finally, they did allow me to pay at a coffee bar in Italy four days earlier, but it was only for 40 Euros, so that’s alright then!

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Some banks may seem to carry the ‘protection’ thing a bit far but I would rather have that than discover that someone else had used my card. On vacations, I just bring cash and just one internatioal credit card so that i won’t have to worry about credit cards not being accepted.

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Two points:
1 If banks don’t require you to inform them that you are traveling abroad then they have no business canceling your card just because you have used it in another country.
2 They are not protecting our money, they are protecting their own. Fraudsters rob banks, not their customers. Unless you have been careless or broken the rules in some way, you are not responsible: it’s between the bank and the fraudster.

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