MSE News: Avoid the blocked card holiday nightmare

NFH

Gloomendoom wrote: »

I suffered a blocked Halifax Clarity card last week in Cyprus. I guessed phoning to sort it out was likely to cost a pretty penny so I just withdrew some cash with a Barclaycard instead.

When I had to phone Santander Zero credit card from Morocco with a similar problem using a cash machine, I phoned them on my mobile and made them reimburse me. After they failed to call me back or rectify the problem, I also made them reimburse me for the fees that Nationwide charged me to withdraw the cash. They didn't argue about it.

If the fault is not yours, you can reasonably expect your card issuer to reimburse your out-of-pocket expenses.

zagfles

SaveTheEuro wrote: »

I've used my N and P card abroad several times. I never inform the N and P in advance.

I only once had a problem. I thought the card had been blocked when a cash machine failed to issue the sum of €300. I rang N and P and they couldn't shed any light on it. I then tried to withdraw €100 and it worked fine. I think that my request for €300 was (at that time) asking for more than a daily limit of £250. It would have been nice if a message on the machine had said "try asking for a smaller amount."

Yes I've had that with Nationwide too - their limit is something like £300 per day so EUR300 should be fine, but ATMs were refusing anything above EUR250 saying the "your bank" has refused it (rather than the ATM itself). Lower amounts worked.

Gloomendoom

reclusive46 wrote: »

I think what happens sometime is it gets blocked and then someone looks at the card in security and then unblocks it if they seen any sort of notifications but on many occasions my card has been blocked at ATMs but not at a point of sale.

zagfles wrote: »

Was it really blocked?

I think sometimes it can just mean there's a problem with the network and they can't contact your bank to get authorisation. Nationwide suggested keep retrying and on the third or fourth attempt it did work.

Yes, I think both of these reasons are plausible. I actually tried the Clarity card four times at two different banks over a period of 15 minutes or so before resorting to using the Barclaycard at a third bank.

NFH wrote: »

When I had to phone Santander Zero credit card from Morocco with a similar problem using a cash machine...

If the fault is not yours, you can reasonably expect your card issuer to reimburse your out-of-pocket expenses.

Useful to know. I think the Barclaycard withdrawal cost £1.50 so I think I'll just put it down to experience this time.