I now officially hate my banking!

[MJKERR]

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?

I travel with three cards

The first are the details for my Debit Card, but not the actual card itself, relating to my Current Account
However I only use this for online loading of the Credit Cards

The second is my Credit Card
Before leaving the UK I have the Credit Limit reduced to nil
I then load with what I expect to spend
When I return to the UK the Credit Limit is automatically restored (I usually buy something cheap on the inbound plane or at Heathrow Airport)

The third is a Currency Card, which is recognised in the USA as a Credit Card
As this is a pre-pay, it has to be loaded with available funds

[njee20]

So why not save yourself all that hassle by not reducing your credit limit to £0...? I don't understand that whatsoever. You're still not loading it, unless it's a prepaid card, not a credit card?

Seems you're making life awkward for yourself.

[red_death]

You can put a balance on a normal credit card...but the issue is more about the banks stopping cards fairly arbitrarily - for example mine weren't questioned in the USA, Chile or an unexpected trip to Canada, yet France/Germany/Belgium where I go at least once or twice a month I've had them stopped for "normal" things like hotels or travel...

It is the unpredictablity that is the worst.  I had my business credit card stopped without warning for booking a hotel in Brussels fortunately I had prepaid for the room but I had no cash with me.

[jpendle]

I have never had the problem travelling for business.
In fact the security on our corporate cards is almost non-existant
I now live in the US and a couple of years ago got a bill for over $3000 for expediture in France and the UK, including car parts?, flowers. cinema tickets, pizza, and more car parts?! I then had to send in my credit card statement with the dodgy items highlighted. As I hadn't in fact used my corporate card for over 2 months, all the items were dodgy, they still wanted a copy of my statement, 'we don't get statements' I said, its all done electronically. So I had to wait a month until they ran their statements, then they sent me mine which I had to annotate and send back!! I'm just glad it wasn't my money.

On our last trip to the UK our US debit and credit cards worked perfectly, except the debit cards chip'n'pin only worked at ATM's.

On previous trips we routinely had our cards stopped at the third transaction, and then the bank's third party fraud team would call our home number even though we had told them we were in the UK and to call our mobiles!

Regards,

John P

[njee20]

I guess the solution is to carry multiple cards - in the event one has arbitrarily been stopped you've still got others. Shouldn't have to though, perhaps you're just a bit dodgy Mike

[MJKERR]

So why not save yourself all that hassle by not reducing your credit limit to £0...? I don't understand that whatsoever. You're still not loading it, unless it's a prepaid card, not a credit card?

I never had any problem with the Credit Card itself

No matter how much the Credit limit was, I was still going to have to load the Currency Card, from my Current Account
The alternative was to carry two or more Currency Cards, and exhaust each one to the load limit, then dispose of them

[Bob Tidbury]

What's a credit card ? I've never had one ,Val and me made the decision when we got married NOT to have a credit card ,if we can't afford it we don't get it.
Val actually has a debit card but won't let me have mine ,she knows I don't need all the railway stuff I would buy if I did .
That's why we have never ever been in debt we don't owe anything and own every thing we have including two cars and the house which was paid for five years before we had too,and we brought up our three children all on two very small wages in fact the most we ever earnt was for two years while Val was office manager for a small catering utensils company,  I am not saying how much but that woman on the telle recently is very lucky to have over £28 in benifits for doing nothing we worked hard for everything we've got and only earnt a little bit more between us.
Bob

[njee20]

So why not save yourself all that hassle by not reducing your credit limit to £0...? I don't understand that whatsoever. You're still not loading it, unless it's a prepaid card, not a credit card?

I never had any problem with the Credit Card itself

No matter how much the Credit limit was, I was still going to have to load the Currency Card, from my Current Account
The alternative was to carry two or more Currency Cards, and exhaust each one to the load limit, then dispose of them

But if you just have a normal credit card (for example the Nationwide one - it has no foreign transaction fee), nothing needs to be loaded on, there is no currency card needed. You have a credit limit (say £5,000), you can spend to your hearts content up to £5,000, then you pay it off. Job done.

I'm obviously missing something, but why are you reducing your credit limit to £0 every time you return to the UK? If you want to ringfence a card for foreign use why not just leave it in your passport instead of your wallet or something? I'm not all that surprised you've having issues with your bank, seems you're doing things very strangely indeed. Just trying to understand the logic.

What's a credit card ? I've never had one ,Val and me made the decision when we got married NOT to ave a credit card ,if we can't afford it we don't get it.
Val actually has a debit card bur won't let me have mine ,she knows I don't need all the railway stuff I would buy if I did .

I couldn't live without a debit card at least! I've not used cash for anything in at least a month! How do you buy things? Surely you need a debit card to get cash out in the first place? Hardly anywhere takes cheques these days.

Credit cards can be useful - they offer extra protection on purchases (even if you don't buy all of an item using a credit card), you can get bonuses - Tesco vouchers, Avios, cash back etc. I can see why people avoid them though, I think the providers can be bad at constantly upping credit limits; although Nationwide always write and say "we're prepared to up your limit, call if you want to do it", whilst Barclaycard just do it! I know I could get into quite a bit of debt if I suddenly decided to max out all of my cards.

[Bob Tidbury]

I'm sorry if I've upset some people with my comment about credit cards .
I do realise that if for  instance you travel abroad on business then that would make sense to have a business credit card rather than using your money and the hasle of claiming it back etc ,
I don't even have a debit card because when we go shopping or out for the day not that we go any where very often ,Val always uses her debit card or we pay cash ,if I'm going to a show Val lets me have a bit of spending money .
That might sound weird to some people but that's how come we've managed on our small wages in the last 34 years. Val is a genius working out our finances and knows within a few pence how much money we have at any given time .
I ALLWAYS say its a shame she couldn't be Chancellor of the exchequer then the country wouldn't be in debt .Me I'm absolutely useless with money ,come to think of it the only thing I am resonably good at at is model railways.
Notice I said resonably good at .
Bob

[njee20]

I don't think anyone's upset Bob, don't worry, nothing you've said is remotely upsetting.

I'm glad you've got a system that works for you, just can't quite comprehend it myself! What if you don't go out together? You presumably can't buy anything online? What if you need something and Val's not available to provide the funds?