How does one prevent NatWest cards being blocked on holiday?

I see that Martin’s Cheap Travel Money guide still suggests that the best way to avoid one’s card being blocked is to tell one’s bank or card company before one goes abroad.

Q. My card was blocked while I was abroad, is there anything I can do to prevent this?
A. To prevent fraud, most card companies track ‘unusual transactions’ and if there’s evidence they slam the breaks on and stop the card being accepted. The best thing to do, unless you’re a regular traveller who spends overseas a lot, is call up the card company to let it know you’re going abroad. Usually, though sadly not always, this stops any problems. If it happens to you while you’re away call up the card company as soon as possible.

However, I’ve recently found that at least the Nationwide and RBS NatWest don’t want to know and appear to have no way of recording this information in a way that would help to prevent the card being blocked.

Although this hasn’t been a problem with my Nationwide Flex account debit card which (touch wood!) has never been blocked, I cannot say the same of the NatWest debit card which appears to be blocked soon after being used for the first time in any foreign country. Indeed I gather from talking to harassed NatWest staff this is an automatic process which cannot be stopped – until you phone them (at some length, after the event) and answer some security questions. Just what you want when you are on holiday!

Indeed, my daughter had this happen to her recently in Egypt (again with a NatWest debit card) and, had she not been with a couple of friends, she would have found herself left without access to any money (like most students, she doesn’t have lots of different cards to choose from). Her initial withdrawal was a small amount - and therefore entirely consistent with her normal card usage pattern - and, having experienced the frustration of previous blocking overseas, she had tried to tell the bank about her trip a few days before her departure. They didn't want to know!

Like most people, I am all in favour of sensible measures to tackle card fraud. However, I think NatWest have taken this too far. If asked, I wonder how many of their customers would be happy with a system that will probably block their cards after first use on every holiday or trip abroad – not many, if any, I suspect. Furthermore, this policy must be driving many of their customers to open accounts with other banks and card companies – so they are not dependent on their NatWest cards. Doesn’t sound a very good policy from anyone’s point of view except their competitors (and possibly the phone companies)!

Their current system might make some sense if one could give them advance information about trips abroad which would prevent blocking. But this isn’t currently possible.

So, in the meantime, can anyone please tell me if they have found any reliable method for preventing blocking of NatWest cards, when used abroad, that works at present?

V