Travel Currency Rejection Delay

PRAISETHESUN

Personally, I'd open an account with Starling, Monzo or Revolut - they can be up and running within about a week in my experience. Use the debit card for fee-free overseas transactions, and for free ATM withdrawals in the odd situation you need some cash.

As for getting your money back from ASDA, if the money has merely been earmarked but not taken there might not be much you can do since these processes are mostly automated. If the money has been taken, you could request NatWest do a chargeback, but that'd probably take just as long.

agrinnall

downinja wrote: »

And using our debit card would have been more expensive.

But that's because you have the wrong debit card, if you had the right one it would have been considerably less expensive. And complaining about short time scale doesn't wash, nobody arranges a multi-country holiday to South America without there being enough time to open a new account. Really the whole thing is down to your bad planning, which I hope is not an omen for the rest of your trip.