Advising Halifax Clarity when travelling abroad

lisyloo

I have just been abroad and my Halifax Clarity credit card did not initially work.
This meant being quite thirsty in a hot country with no money for water and spending about £15 on phone calls from abroad to advise Halifax that my attempts were genuine.

So you might like to advise them when you are travelling abroad before you leave.
I thought about this beforehand but did not think it was necessary, however it might be a sensible precaution to consider.

pichon

That must have been really annoying. Thanks for sharing and letting us know.

Ben8282

Security blocks of this kind do, unfortunately, happen quite often and not only with Halifax. Letting them know in advance that you will be travellling abroad can help but is not a gurantee that no security block will be put on.

jennifernil

Yep, we always advise them when we travel, has worked OK so far.

Same with Nationwide.

hunsbury0

lisyloo wrote: »

I have just been abroad and my Halifax Clarity credit card did not initially work.
This meant being quite thirsty in a hot country with no money for water and spending about £15 on phone calls from abroad to advise Halifax that my attempts were genuine.

So you might like to advise them when you are travelling abroad before you leave.
I thought about this beforehand but did not think it was necessary, however it might be a sensible precaution to consider.

Let them know of which countries that you will be visiting, at least a week before travel & also take backup cards eg post office type etc.

guesswho2000

This is especially important where you're using a UK card in a country with no chip & pin, when visiting the USA; lat time I went I had no end of problems getting cash or making purchases when I first arrived.

virgo17

I have a fairly new Halifax Clarity card and notified them about 3 weeks before we went to Spain. The card worked perfectly all of the time abroad.

As we travel to Europe quite frequently it would be useful to be able to notify them of coming travel via the online banking system instead of having to ring them each time. Unless anyone knows how to do it online.

jen245

When I rang up to activate my Clarity card last year, the person I spoke to told me that I'd need to ring them before I go abroad, I would have done anyway, as I learnt the hard way with Santander!

luci

Halifax are good at taking travel details, but you can only advise them of one trip at a time so have to keep calling after each trip if you have more than one trip in the pipeline.

lisyloo

Unless anyone knows how to do it online.

I am pretty sure you can't email or secure message Halifax, so I'm afraid it's the telephone and much better to do that in the UK than abroad.

jennifernil

When we rang them about the trip we are about to take, they asked if we had any other plans to travel within the next 12 months, so it sounds like they can now take notification for more than one trip.