travel money card

[dave thefish]

hello all.has anybody used one of these travel money cards.are they a good idea? many pros or cons?.travelling into europe only.any advice or comments thanks very much

[dzug]

The cons are mostly that the charges are high and their are a lot of them. Generally more expensive than taking TCs/cash or a normal debit card if you add them all up.

The Caxton fx one has fewer charges than most.

[ojread2]

The best one, AMEX, has now been stopped
The only charges I ever had were to withdraw from an ATM which you get with any car you use

Don't go for the new Electron type cards - they have Visa Electron on the front - useless in lots of places

If you have a Nationwide account with a debit card they are reportedly the best to use abroad

You could try asking on Trip Advisor in the relevant section according to which ever country you are travelling too

hth

oj

[Senga 2]

I've used the Post Office one twice but both in Eurozone and had no bother. don't know how easy it would be outwith Europe though as I haven't chanced. only small hitch you need to withdraw a minimum of 20 euros, so anything less than that gets left on the card.

[THAIBUS]

Nationwide visa debit card is the best as you can use it worldwide and Nationwide don't charge you any fee's and the rate of exchange is very good

[tottontigger]

Avoid the Post Offfice one like the plague! I called to transfer some money to mine by debit card and was told it had been declined - howver, they still had the money on hold so I then couldn't access it from my bank. I called the bank and they said they had authorised it. Fortunately, I wasn't abroad at the time as it took a lot of sorting out. The Post Office attitude was appalling - they said they would do it and call me back and did neither. They also failed to answer my email. I finally had a contemptuous anwer to my complaint which said, among other things 'emails don't always filter through to us' and 'it was Visa's fault'. They don't make it clear what limit you can draw either - In Italy I could only draw �200 and, as I needed �800 in cash, I had to make 4 withdrawals over four days and pay four fees.