🏦: do you recognize a charge of zero? It was flagged as suspicious.
👱: maybe? My card was refused at some ATMs… maybe one of them created a zero value transaction for some reason?
🏦: the charge for zero follows a charge for $7xxx.xx.
👱: WTF?! I don’t care about the charge for zero. Tell me more about the 4-figure charge plz.
🏦: yeah, there was a charge for $7xxx.xx. Do you not recognize that?
👱: hell no I do not. Are you really sure there is a transaction of that magnitude? And why are you questioning me over the charge for zero when there is a crazy charge right next to it?
(lot of back and forth… me asking if she was sure… I could hardly believe what I was hearing)
🏦: since you do not recognize the transaction for $7xxx.xx, I am deactivating your card. You will get a new one.
Fuck me. I am traveling abroad and this will fuck my shit up. Then I realized after the call that the transaction amount is very close to my remaining credit. I thought surely that banker must have been misreading her screen. Called back.
🏦(Next banker): indeed there was never a transaction for $7xxx.xx. That was the value of a balance inquiry, not a transaction.
👱: ok, so you have a colleague who is struggling to understand the infosystem. Please re-activate my card.
🏦: we’re unable to do that. Yes, it’s clear the first banker you spoke to made a mistake. But the card cannot be reactivated. Sorry…
WTF. I did not even do a balance inquiry. It must have been something the ATM did on its own just to know what withdrawal amounts to offer. So then I asked why was the txn refused? Banker: we have an ATM limit of $xxx. (This figure changes with every banker I talk to. Apparently the limit is lower than what the ATM offered in the preset amounts).
Is this a software defect? If the ATM wants to know what amounts to offer me for withdrawal, then querying the bank for the balance is wrong. It should really be querying the bank for the cash withdrawal limit/availability, which is not the same as the balance or available credit.
What country are you from, and what country are you in while traveling? Systems from different regions sometimes talk to each other in really weird ways.
Also, never travel with dependence on a single card (least of all debit only).
Have cards from different systems
Yeah, overall good advice. But there are very few cards that give the same exchange rate. Most cards are 3%. I have some shitty alternate options with unknown surprises (since I never use them abroad, I have to find out do they need a travel notice… Will the AI bots be more trigger happy on fraud suspicion? Different ATM limits… different ways of treating cash back, etc) It’s a mess- Not how I want to spend my time.
Amex is much more commonly accepted than Diners Club, but Amex has the worst exchange rates.
From the US, in Europe.
If you’re traveling in Europe, I remember seeing a YouTube video accusing some banks of setting a dark pattern in the ATM to convince you to do a balance check instead of just making a withdrawal since the bank sometimes gets paid a fee for balance checks.
