[Anonymous]

[mostlyharmless]

Can anyone tell me why on earth banks can’t make it easier to tell them where I’m going? Just had my credit card cancelled on a trip to Russia – I know I should tell them every time I travel (altho you’d think they could have worked out by now that I get around a bit), but why do I have to wait on the phone to do it?

I’ve got online banking, so why isn’t there a neat little drop-down menu of countries so I can just fill in where I’m going at the click of a mouse? The banks always fall back on the ‘security’ excuse, but given I can empty my account from the website, I just can’t see why I can’t also tell them where I’m going to be. Can anyone explain?

[jsn55]

I can tell you why. Bankers are not the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree. I travel all the time and have never had one minute’s problem with American Express, but occasionally I am forced to use a bank card. Only once did I tell the bank I was travelling befor I left. Of course they refused to authorize a charge in Istanbul, under $50. When I phoned them after the trip to complain, they informed me that they had called me to get my authorization but there was no answer, so they denied the charge. This message was contained in a 7-paragraph letter full of boiler-plate about how they came to this decision and it didn’t make any sense even after carefully reading it 3 times. This is stupid beyond belief. So now I just take my chances and don’t call them and things have been OK last few years. But I charge very little on the bank cards; if I didn’t have the AmEx life would be much tougher. I know the card is more expensive, but it’s worth it.

Just this last two weeks, however, I have requested three different things from USBank via email and have been communicated with immediately and my requests taken care of. So maybe there’s hope for the banks!

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