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.

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!

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.

@ Kelly & Austin

Capital One are known for their super security here in the UK, and one of the consumers on the BBC show were Capital One customers too. I suppose it’s best them being secure, but like you say, there’s taking it that step too far.

@ Debbie

Italy seems to be a problem Country, I wonder if the credit card companies and banks have a lot of issues there. Great tip about forwarding your home number too, never thought about that.

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.

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

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.

@ Simon

Good points and I am glad you’ve had a good experience. As for people being stranded it’s true what you say. I would never go on holiday with just a debit or credit card, and hopefully a few more consumers will learn from this blog post and others experiences

@ Nick

Wow, that sounds like more of a nightmare than actually loosing your card abroad. A work colleague had a similar issue and it took him over 6 weeks for the bank to refund the £1600 stolen from his account by a scammer.

@ Sandy,

Two weeks that’s crazy. Technology is great but when it comes to systems they should be processes in place should the automatic system come into force - they must be a manual way of lifting the block.

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.

@ Rohan

Glad your finding the blog useful..

What I like about blogs is that I can have my point of view and everyone else has a chance to comment and post their opinions, that way the discussion isn’t one-way.

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.