Using ATMs when overseas

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5 yrs ago

It happened again! For the second time in less than a year an ATM timed out and cancelled a transaction but still deducted the amount I'd requested from my bank account. Both times it has happened I've been in Indonesia. The first time I waited until I returned to Australia, filled out a form that my bank gave me and many weeks later I received a refund from VISA. The second time it happened (quite recently) I contacted my bank via email and was directed to fill out an ATM Dispute Form which I've done. Again, it will probably be weeks or months until I get the money back.

I'm nervous now about using ATMs while overseas. It's like a lottery: most of the times I get the money I requested but occasionally I don't. When I don't, that money is simply gone until I can retrieve it at a much later date. I try to pay by card whenever possible but there are times when I need cash. When that cash doesn't arrive and the account is debited anyway, it's a financial shock because I typically don't have much money in the account to begin with and I'm in another country!

Anyway, I'm not asking for crowd-funding but I am curious as to how often this happens to people while travelling overseas. It seems to me that if the transaction is cancelled, then the money should not be deducted because it was never dispensed. The onus is fully on the user of the ATM to recover money that should never have been taken in the first place. No action means no money back. My Australan bank is sympathetic enough to what happened but I still have to follow the lengthy recovering procedure.

It seems that I'm being treated by my Australian bank in the same way that I would be if it happened in Australia. The situation is very different however, if I'm overseas. Is it unreasonable to expect that my bank should be more supportive in such a situation by perhaps fast tracking the recovery process. I'd be interested to hear people's views on this matter and to hear of their own experiences.

3 comments

Suze

5 yrs ago

Have you tried Load&Go Travel card from australia Post ?

Yes Suze, very reliable. Also the Citibank debit card worked well in Asia; that one is also loaded at the post office. Of course it is in $A whereas the load&go card can be in a variety of currencies. In Bali I used the ATM at the Commonwealth Bank.

SuziJ

5 yrs ago

Yes, I used the Australia Post card in 2013 in the UK/Ireland.

Had some trouble getting our hire car when all we had was the funds on the card. The hire car company said that we didn't have our name on the card, just 'Valued Customer', which wasn't any good. Had all the funds for the trip on the card, so had no other funds. In the end, after 3 hours, we paid on the card, but were told in no uncertain terms that they won't accept the card again. Even though we prepaid for the hire on the card and were told to use the same card. But the agent didn't say that we couldn't use the prepaid cards without our name on them, which wasn't their fault, as they don't get told the information about the prepaid cards in the first place.

The moral of the story is: get a prepaid Visa or Master debit card with your name on it. There's only 3 that I know of - Velocity, QANTAS & ANZ (must be applied for on the internet, cost $11 for 2 cards, and picked up in branch). The Velocity & QANTAS cards are linked to your membership and have the membership number and name on one side, and the prepaid card on the other. The ANZ is as you'd expect just with prepaid on it.

I've also done an ATM fee comparison and have found the Velocity card the cheapest of the three cards with the QANTAS card coming in a very close second. And both cards have 11 currencies on them.

The best suggestion is to compare all the cards on the market, and make your choice from there.

MICK

5 yrs ago

Never had a problem voodooguru. We did have an issue recently where the transaction was refused but found out by trial and error that there was a withdrawal limit. The machine never told us that but after that worked perfectly.

We are also very careful with the machines we use. Mostly use machines INSIDE a branch or at the very least IN AN ENCLOSED ROOM with cameras recording so that we do not falll victim to skimmers. So far so good!

Songbird

5 yrs ago

I have never had any trouble in Europe or the UK but Canada!

I had Canadian money on my cash card but the ATM wanted to change from Australian $ to Canadian $ at a cost of over $30 so I cancelled the transaction, tried again later same thing happened both times at Lake Louisa. Tried in Bamff and had no trouble.

When I got home and checked my account, they had taken out 2 x $103 for the transactions I cancelled. Contacted QANTAS to get my money back - no luck! The people who run the ATM said that $300 in $100 notes had been dispatched twice that day and so I didn't get my money refunded. Funny thing is I had only tried to withdraw $100!

In 4 different hotels in Canada wehad trouble with accounts or not getting our money. Never go back there again.

Eddy

5 yrs ago

Songbird, our experience in Canada was quite the opposite to yours. We used our Qantas Money card in Vancouver, Whistler, Banff, Toronto and Montreal with absoluitely no trouble at all. In New York we used our Westpac handycard at Bank of America. We are definately going back again to visit eastern Canada.

SuziJ

5 yrs ago

The trick with these cards is:

Transfer funds into the 'wallet' of the currency you're going to be using, then before you leave Aussie shores, you should change the 'main' currency from AUD to GBP, CAD, Euro, etc so that your withdrawals will be from the currency wallet.

I certainly wouldn't wait until I arrived home to check the transactions. I'd do it every day to make sure that there's no suspicious activity going on.

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