Caxton and FairFX prepaid money cards - in South America

I am a Brit abroad right now, currently living in BA for three months, and before leaving I obtained both a Caxton and FairFX prepay money card, as I don't want a credit card but I wanted to see which was the better performer.

Now Caxton is currently coming out BY FAR the best card, taking very little in commission, offering a pretty good exchange rate - however I currently am unable to load it and am not sure why. Although I am waiting to hear back from my bank on this - it may be because it is the first time I have tried to load it in this country. And not caxtons fault at all.

In terms of exchange FairFx have whacked on a pretty large charge, almost as large as what my bank would have (which is why i am not using my bank card out here!).

I am pretty disappointed, as by no means am I a thicko (!) and I thought I had established that charges like this would not be applicable.

Ok so let me explain the differences:

200 pesoes (at the perfect exchange rate) = £29.09
Caxton FX - £29.81 (exchange rate of 6.7, charges of 72p)
FairFX - £34.05!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was charged approx 18 pesoes (£2.48) at the bank I used and this was after shopping around and being told the same by all banks that this charge would apply when using this card. On top of that came the FairFX charge of £2.10 - isn't it meant to be £1? perhaps it is because I'm not withdrawing dollars or euros but it sucks any which way you look at it!

I am annoyed because I have unnecessarily lost money and if I can sort out the load problem with Caxton I will be shelving my Fair card and going ahead with just the Caxton one.
I thought I would share this in case anyone else is considering which card to use somewhere outside of the Euro or Dollar zone.

:money::eek: Hayley