Traveling Credit Woes

I travel a lot and just when I think I am a Pro, something happens that makes me re-evaluate what I carry. In this case it was my credit card!

I was recently out to dinner on a business trip, when I went to pay for my meal with my trusty credit card. The waitress comes back with a sympathetic expression on her face and whispers, "your card was declined".  I was embarrassed because I thought I had checked it before I left to make sure my last payment went through, but maybe I had forgotten.  So I gave her my debit card (I know you're not supposed to do that).  She came back a few minutes later that the debit card too was declined.  Now I wasn't embarrassed I was worried!!  One card declined is an “oops”, two cards declined means something is wrong.

Luckily I had the cash to cover the bill, but still two cards.... denied... not good.

I contacted the bank and found that because I've been traveling in and out of the country so much and some of the spending had been erratic (I shopped a LOT in several countries) they thought my card had been stolen and put a fraud block on it so they could verify some of the purchases.  I then learned they DID try to contact me on a couple of occasions, but since I generally don't answer the phone if I don't recognize the number (will henceforth drop this habit) AND when I didn't respond they blocked my credit card.

Well then why was my debit card blocked too?  Well it turns out many many YEARS ago when someone stole my debit card and wiped out my checking account, it took me a bit to get everything back in order and I checked an option somewhere on a form that said something like "if one card is under suspicion for fraud them block access to both" or something like that.  My reasoning was, since I carry I sometimes carry my debit and credit card in the same wallet then it’s entirely possible for someone to get access to both cards and its easier to just block them both in cases like this.  (BTW both cards are issued by the exact same bank, not sure if this option is available in all areas).  It is a great idea until something like this bites me on the butt.

The moral of the story is that 1) Carry enough cash just in case something happens to your cards 2) Fraud protection is a good idea 3) Have a card on hand from a different bank, but don't carry it in the same place as your main card.