Travel credit cards

I'll make a note not to spend silly amounts of cash on holiday and pay with card in future.

I had the trial Supercard for ATM withdrawals previously but will only use this for purchases abroad from now on due to the 2.99% ATM charge it now imposes. I also currently have a Nationwide FlexPlus debit card.

I have been trying to decide whether it would be worth it for me to get either a Creation Everyday or the Halifax Clarity.

I have decided against the Creation as there appears to be a weekly limit of £500 cash withdrawal and I may need more than this to fund a family holiday.

I have tried to compare how much it will cost me in real terms. As I understand it, if I withdraw €1000 using the Nationwide I will be charged £853.71 (I believe Nationwide uses the Visa exchange rate which today is £1 = €1.1713500000).

The credit card eligibility calculator indicates I would get the Clarity at 18.9% APR. Therefore, if I withdraw €1000 using the Halifax Clarity card, which I believe uses the Mastercard rate, I would be charged £840.13, (Mastercard exchange rate currently £1 = €1.190291), providing I used on-line banking to pay of the balance on the same day.

However, if I don't get chance to use on-line banking, I would incur at the most approximately £12.60 in charges (@18.9% APR using the guide £1.50 per month per £100). £840.13 + £12.60 = £852.73, which is £0.98 less than Nationwide charge.

Worst case scenario £853.71, best case scenario £840.13, £13.58 difference. Am I missing something?

Apologies if this is the wrong place for this. I just followed the link from:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/travel-credit-cards

Ok, so I applied and was accepted for a Creation Credit Card. I went for it, rather than Halifax Clarity, due to the slightly lower APR.

The card arrived quickly (good!), but no pin (bad!), although I was able to use it successfully and with no problems to book a hotel and buy travel insurance online (good!). Being so busy - entirely my oversight, I acknowledge - I didn't realise that the pin hadn't come until just before I went on a short-break holiday abroad. I rang Creation's customer services, which was not a satisfactory experience (bad!). All they could do was re-issue the pin, apparently, which would take 7 working days (bad!). I'd be back from my holiday before the pin arrived. [No helpful service like NatWest where you can get cash from an ATM using an app on your smart phone that generates a code that you type into the ATM keypad (a brilliant facility - only had to use it once but it was a lifesaver!).] Although he said he'd ordered it, whether the adviser did ever re-issue it or not, I don't know. All I can say is that it never arrived, so I have not received a pin for the card in the whole time I've had it (bad!). All in all, it meant that I couldn't use my Creation card abroad for purchases where chip & pin is used or for cash withdrawals (bad!), which were the reasons why I had wanted it in the first place.

The hotel I booked overcharged me by more than the original cost of the booking. I'd booked it through Booking.com and so used them to sort the refund, rather than Creation. [As an aside, although the Booking.com customer service advisers were a bit hit and miss - one useless, one excellent - it did ensure that the hotel refunded me.] Nevertheless, I kept Creation informed as the payment due date was approaching. I made a manual payment to cover all the expenses on my card that were due with the exception of the disputed hotel charge. The Creation adviser told me that, if the hotel made the refund after the payment due date, Creation would refund any interest charged to my account automatically (good!). This did not happen (bad!). Fortunately, I was keeping an eye on the account and saw it was not being refunded. I emailed Customer Services to query this and the interest was refunded in full and backdated to the date it had been charged to my account (good!). I was pleased that the situation was rectified, but annoyed that I had to chase Creation to get it to do something that was supposed to happen automatically.

My first statement came through the post (good!). Personally, I like getting postal statements - I find them a very useful reminder to check my account. I also like having an online facility and save electronic copies of all my statements for reference purposes. I don't know why but, as a reminder, getting an email to say I have a new statement waiting online just doesn't have the same impact as getting a statement through the letterbox.

Although I had received my new card, there was nothing with it (as I recall) about setting up an online account to monitor it (bad!). To be honest, I then forgot about it until I got something through the post or by email that gave the impression that an online facility had been set up. I couldn't remember doing it, but thought perhaps it had been done automatically by Creation as part of setting up a new customer. If so, that would be great, I thought. I looked on the website and tried to access the account that I had inferred had been set up from the correspondence I'd received. No joy! I can be a bear with very little brain sometimes but, after a little while, it did occur to me that I might have misunderstood the standard letter I'd received but, being on the site anyway, it seemed a good time to register for an online account. Not a straightforward process (bad!) and I had to ring customer services to be talked through it (bad!) as I found it not very straightforward, in fact, rather confusing (bad!).

What was not at all clear, but which I found out much later, was that the very act of registering for an online account means that the option of receiving paper statements was automatically and instantly turned off (bad!). Apparently, or so I was told the other day by a customer service adviser, you can have an online account OR statements by post, but NOT both (bad!). I was not aware that this change had happened - it was not at all clear or obvious (bad!) - and, again, had I not been checking my account regularly, I could easily have missed the next payment date because, for some reason that I don't know/understand, a direct debit was never set up (bad!).

I like to have an online access so I can manage my account how and when I want, without having to deal with or rely on other people. I've been with Creation for all of 3 months and had to ring customer services far too often (bad!). The service has been ok at best and downright unhelpful (bad!) when I realised just before I was due to fly off on holiday that I had no pin and so my primary means of accessing foreign currency and making purchases abroad was not actually available to me. The standard correspondence is unclear at best, well I found it really quite confusing (bad!) and, as I've said already, have never received a pin (bad!).

Overall, I've been underwhelmed by the service provided by Creation and found that it does not meet my needs, so, I have closed my account. I will be applying for a Halifax Clarity Credit Card instead.

In my opinion, Creation Credit Card scores 2.5 out of 10.

I replaced my Halifax Clarity card after reading of the Creation card on MSE. I had been underwhelmed with the Halifax customer service typically finding very long call queues when trying to get through to them.
I found the Creation application straightforward and everything arrived promptly. Like a previous poster, I wrongly assumed I was registered for online access and had to call in for assistance to be told I needed to register! I found the person on the phone helpful and then simply registered online myself.
Happy to recommend them.