Two years ago I went to the USA
I informed my bank, "It will not be a problem"
Went to perform an online transaction on Friday evening and it was blocked "You are not in the UK", eek!
To make it worse it was a Bank Holiday weekend, so had to wait until Tuesday

Last week I had to make an emergency trip to the USA at short notice
I was in London, so phoned the bank and told them about what happened the last time
"You need to visit your branch and complete the authorisation form"
I cannot do that, as I fly out in 4 hours time...
"Sorry, we can't help you"
No choice but to check my Credit Card, and hope it had enough money on it
A quick login before leaving the UK, and put as much money on it as possible!

When I get back on Wednesday I am going to be giving my bank a severe talking to
How is someone that commutes between the UK and USA supposed to live?

Tell me about it - happens to me a fair bit.  Work quite often send me to various places (mostly just Europe) at reasonably short notice.  On several occasions they have stopped my account due to "suspicious" transactions - when I asked them what I was supposed to do they advised I should fill in an online form each time I went abroad with details of where and when.  Not entirely practical.

Cheers, Mike

Quote from: red_death on August 22, 2016, 10:34:38 PMI was supposed to do they advised I should fill in an online form each time I went abroad

Halifax don't have such an online form, you need to physically insert your Debit Card at the branch AND sign the form in front of a member of staff

The staff are aware of what I do for job, so hopefully they can sort something out for me on my next visit
They have done it for other members of staff, who also bank with Halifax...

I feel your woes in my job while I can normally give notice well err some of the main locations we go you can have access to shops from all different nations which show up as been fron thier country of origin even though they are next to each other, thankfully they were aware this may happen.

I used my card no issues, returned home granted 4 months later at 3am at hertz car rental at Brize norton and bang card declined, phoned my bank (natwest at the time) and well the woman on the other end of the phone was understanding but useless!!

I loved the quote the "bank has just cancelled your card, due to suspect activity and there is nothing I can do you will have to wait for your new card to arrive", its fair to say I was fairly upset having not been home for almost 4 months so I well not very polite at all told her someone better find a way to make my card work so I can get home and see my family or there will be a severe issue in the nearest nat west branch to me!

She was of no use but the woman at Hertz was amazinf and found a solution to the problem for me, so I left Brize Norton at 5am, and arrived in Manchester at 9am where I went to my local natwest and well lets just say the tired grumpy and extremely smelly after 28hours of travel and well from been where I was definatly made a scene.

I have never heard someone so sorry in all my life!! They even paid for the hire car as an appology! But 4 days later I still moved banks!

When we travel outside of Europe, we receive a travel advice pack
This includes carrying at least two forms of payment (Credit Card and topup Currency Card)
However, what it does not include is how to topup one of those, and we have pointed this out to the travel department!
Ironically, the travel department are aware of this, but the advice is to topup the Currency Card with your expected daily spending before you leave Europe

Interesting. I recently started using online banking, and one of the options is to select when you are out of the country. Very quick, very easy. I am a little surprised that you cannot do that over the phone, what with telephone banking and the like...

I always take at least two forms of payment (one is the Post Office credit card, no fees for overseas transactions), for security.

Quote from: Claude Dreyfus on August 23, 2016, 09:30:08 AMI am a little surprised that you cannot do that over the phone, what with telephone banking and the like...

You can, if you can remember all the answers to the security questions
I use telephone banking about once every four or five years!
Then when you finally do give the correct answers, I get the same response, "You need to visit the branch and complete the form"
er, hello, I am phoning you because I am out of Europe and cannot access my account!

However, they will authorise ONE transaction, but there are more hoops for that too
List the last three transactions, and the amount and dates must be exact!
What the current transaction will be, and it will be authorised for one hour only

Anyway, arrived at Los Angeles Airport, used the airport WiFi and managed to login!
I had this before, it would appear certain locations in the USA are trusted

Been there! Experienced the anguish...
In the 30ish years before I retired I lived in/worked in/visited 30 plus countries. (I worked as a consultant in the oil and telecoms field - undersea cables and pipelines)  I used an agency in the UK that handled my travelling arrangements and my financials for me (invoicing, banking etc). They were amazing. On one occasion I called them when I was stuck in China with no access to cash. Within 20 mins I had a return call. 'go to this bank, here's the address, with passport in hand, they will give you what you need, have a nice day'.  They were waiting for me and were holding 1000 US Dollars in my name. Show passport, sign a receipt, job done. Similar experiences in Iraq, Malaysia and Australia, among others, show that it is possible.  BUT - why can't the banks do it without third party involvement? On many occasions I have had to have a rental car payed for remotely as, despite advising my bank that I was going abroad, my card was closed down with 'suspected fraud' as the reason when queried. I have had three replacement cards issued in a single 8 month period as a result of this. The bank seemed to see this as routine and had little to offer as a solution.
Others in the same field as myself went through similar experiences. One person I meet regularly on projects carried up to 10,000 US in a body belt at all times. Tooooooo risky!

I feel the pain.

The stupidest behaviour I ever encountered from my bank was a few years back, when we were holidaying in India.

Two days before we left, I rang my bank/credit card provider to tell them that we would be in India for ten days. "Fine, Sir, thank you very much for informing us, I've made a note on your records" was the forelock tugging response.

A couple of days into the trip, I roll up at the reception desk of our hotel in Delhi to settle up our bill. We were catching an early train to Agra the following day. Thank heavens I went to pay the night before...

The hotel was by no means a dive, BTW - it was a classy place, a member of a well-known, thoroughly respectable chain. Enter Chip & PIN. Credit card bounces...

Phone bank in UK. "I'm in India and you've refused my card". "Yes, I can see you told us you'd be travelling to India, can you answer some security questions?" I couldn't. I forget what they asked me but it was some nonsense about how much our last bill payment was. Something like that. There was no way of answering it without access to a bank statement, that was, er, back in the UK, 4,500 miles away. "What part of "I'm in India" don't you understand?" "Can you answer the security question, sir?" And so it went on. Computer says "no"!

We'd presumably have been washing dishes for a year if the desk clerk hadn't taken pity on my exasperation, and, with me still on the phone to my bank, took the card out of my hand,  keyed the number into his handset, did something on his desk phone, and put the charge through as "customer not present"!!!

No problem, straight through. How could that make any  sense at all?? The charge was declined when I entered a valid PIN and accepted when I was apparently not there?? Bonkers.

Stunned silence from the bank guy on the phone... They did later refund me the not inconsiderable mobile phone bill though.

Not a recent experience with UK banks but still quite amusing. I banked with NatWest whilst a student back in the 1980s and after leaving the UK in 1991 to go and work in the Middle East I retained my account as I needed access to banking in the UK anyway. Fast forward to 2007 when having moved to Australia in 2004 my employer assigned me for a year to the UK office as an expatriate (oh the irony). Anyway, having been married for ten years, thought it was about time now that we were living in the UK for a year, to make the account a joint one and add my lovely other half's name to it. The Saturday after we arrived in the UK, we went into Natwest. They insisted upon proof of address in the UK - we had just arrived, were staying in a hotel and had not had opportunity to find a place yet. No matter how we argued, they would not budge. We went next door to HSBC, with whom we banked in Australia and within one hour (most of which was spent explaining the situation and completing the account opening application, we had a new joint account, ATM and credit cards on their way and internet and telephone banking access organised.

I immediately went back to NatWest and asked to close the account! They desperately tried to convince me otherwise and amazingly what had less than two hours previously been impossible suddenly became achievable, but in my eyes it was too late, so we closed the account anyway!

I travel quite a bit, and have never had any problems with a card or bank, AmEx, Barclays or Nationwide. Never bothered notifying them either. What are people finding, cards just being declined?

I can't believe a bank would expect you to go into a branch prior to going abroad, in this day and age?!

Quote from: njee20 on August 23, 2016, 07:33:56 PM
What are people finding, cards just being declined?

I never had any problem with the cards themselves

I only load the cards with enough money for specific purchases and/or limits

I had to pay for a Hire Car, so had to load my Credit Card with £4500
I did not want to do it whilst in the UK, or the first week in the USA
I advised the bank I would login on the Friday, transfer the funds and the transaction would take place on the Sunday

However, when I went to login on the Friday I was met by a message that I was not in the UK, could not proceed and to contact the branch

I've traveled a bit when I was in the oil industry (sadly a distant memory now).  I didn't have much problems but I admit I never ended up anywhere considered too dodgy.  I did have my RBS account hammered one xmas and my crew change was due, RBS said I had to return fraud / police forms to a branch -and I literally made it into a branch with the paperwork about half an our before the closing day.  I used to have to declare on my cards whether I was in/out my country but that was like 5-10 years ago and they all relaxed now.  Back in the day I carried 2 Barclaycards (one work, one personal).  They always had quirks.  Barclaycard personal was difficult for security, but I remember a block once -they were 11months out of sync though which turned into a farce.

Paypal has been hassle before, we used a Norwegien Satellite base-station on the boat I was on so even if you picked up the phone on them, you had to go through hoops and jumps to prove you were British.

....Mind you I had to take my mortgage provider to the Ombudsman last year because they wouldn't respond to me, I always do business over the counter if at all possible, but I've been bounced everywhere -counter no good, telephone no good so it's just a nightmare now.

My colleague is ex-IT and pointed out to me that if you call a customer care number these days and get through to someone but cant get too far, don't be so sure you're not actually speaking to a computer.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjir_Obo9jOAhVFxRQKHV1GC5kQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fimgur.com%2Fgallery%2FXkU4Ajf&psig=AFQjCNHrT4wzORVrylF1maFyjXGp_URbMQ&ust=1472066971431364

....I'm not a teeny bit bitter because I was in Stornoway the other week.  Ferries and Hotel paid for.  Except on check-out from hotel at something like 05:30 where hotel claimed they never had payment cleared.  So much for booking.com -AVOID that website!!!

I had cycled 15 miles in the rain to do a transfer to a mate. The sum of money involved was apparently just over a trigger point for extra checks.
I was stood at the counter getting the Spanish Inquisition when I noticed that I had a large hold in my cycling trousers. At this point a drip of cold rain ran down my back. I recall asking the cashier which part of me oozed international drug-smuggling money launderer

Quote from: mjkerr on August 23, 2016, 08:19:26 PM

Quote from: njee20 on August 23, 2016, 07:33:56 PM
What are people finding, cards just being declined?

I never had any problem with the cards themselves

I only load the cards with enough money for specific purchases and/or limits

I had to pay for a Hire Car, so had to load my Credit Card with £4500
I did not want to do it whilst in the UK, or the first week in the USA
I advised the bank I would login on the Friday, transfer the funds and the transaction would take place on the Sunday

However, when I went to login on the Friday I was met by a message that I was not in the UK, could not proceed and to contact the branch

How do you 'load' a credit card? Surely you have a limit, you spend up to that limit? Is this one of those pre-paid MasterCard jobs? Surely a 'proper' credit card makes vastly more sense for travelling, particularly when you'll be reimbursed by your employer?