Watch out for Visa!
A new important travel tip: if you’re planning on changing your spending habits drastically, such as going on vacation, or if you’re spending an extended period of time outside of your ‘normal spending zone’ (we think that means your country), call and tell your bank. If the person who answers the phone doesn’t know what you’re talking about, ask to be transferred to the fraud department or an account specialist. Visa is trying to crack down on the amount of money lost through credit card fraud, so any unusual activity can cause a lock on your account. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, I assume, because my card was just fine for the semester I spent in Germany 3 years ago even though I was withdrawing large amounts of money fairly frequently.
It’s also a good idea to find out what your daily/weekly/monthly withdrawal limits are if you don’t know them already, since trying to withdraw ever-smaller amounts of money is what caused Visa to flat-out cancel my husband’s and my cards and left us kind of stranded this weekend while we wait for a new card to arrive.
I tried this very thing with my Visa supplier (Saison here in Japan). No dice. Tried to pre-authorize a large payment so it wouldn’t get denied, but they had NO FRIGGING METHOD of doing this. I even demanded to talk to a supervisor. Jeez.
June 15th, 2006 at 5:18 pmThere’s a lot more to this story now: Visa sent our emergency replacement card quickly as promised, however, no PIN. They didn’t even send one, and snce the card it was replacing was, *cough*, “stolen”, we weren’t able to use the old PIN. We can’t even get them to tell it to us over the phone, or send it to parents(we are currently homeless, as we rent and were planning to move into a bigger place this year anyway, we thought we’d just store everything for the summer). However, we found out that my card was still good - they’d only locked it because it’s linked to the same account as my husband’s. What sense does that make?
So we got down to 300 yen cash by the time we were able to withdraw money - and the restaurants and tokyo metro office here don’t take credit cards. We were so, so relieved.
Then, the second time we went to withdraw, it didn’t work. Again.
Telling them we were on vacation apparently wasn’t enough. They’d locked it because of my “unusually large withdrawal”.
I usually don’t bother with traveller’s checks, but I’m starting to think that they’re better than visa here in Japan.
June 15th, 2006 at 9:48 pmActually, your “normal spending zone” can mean any significant change in spending habits. I live in the Bay Area. Around five years ago, when I would often fly to southern California for work once or twice a month, I’d sometimes get a call from my bank’s anti-fraud department as various charges went through. Usually I noticed it most when I was visiting a couple different cities over a few days, where day trips didn’t usually set it off. I didn’t notice them calling as much when visiting other areas, though.
However, of the two times I’ve visited Japan, I never had a problem with any charges being declined. I’ve always read and agree that’s always a good idea to carry some cash in Japan as many smaller businesses will accept only that.
If you’re travelling for a while, you might want to get a voicemailbox set up in your home country. I have one where it will send me an email (with attachment!) when voicemail is received. At least this might give the bank a way to try to reach you to verify these problems.
Good luck for a smooth vacation and although I’m sure this is all super-frustrating, remember that your bank is trying to make sure that you are using your money, and not some stranger.
June 16th, 2006 at 1:11 amYeah, that’s why I’m not really angry, just frustrated. Although by the ninth phone call I was getting pretty close.
We brought some cash, but ended up having to use it all to rent our monthly apatment. That’s something a lot of guidebooks don’t mention: a lot of the places that accept credit cards here charge the visa fee to the buyer, rather than eating it themselves a la American Businesses. Our debit cards also give us a better exchange rate with ATM transactions than Visa ones. So cash is pretty much preferable all around.
Good idea with the voicemail thing - I’ll look into it.
June 16th, 2006 at 8:47 am