Traveling or Shopping Domestically or Cross Border with Your ATM or Credit Card

It used to be the case, that when one decided to take a trip they went and got traveler's checks before they went on their trip. We did, over 20 years ago. But things have changed.

Most of us now take cash and our debit and/or credit card.
Many of us buy our airline tickets on-line as well as reserve our car rentals and our hotel/motel rooms, sometimes prepaying for the room.

A lot of us also surf the internet and purchase many different items on-line for a number of reasons. Like for me, I do a fair amount of on-line purchasing because either the item isn't available locally and possibly for the price offered on-line as well as we live in the semi-sticks. We're not that close to any big shopping center. I save a lot of gas and time by shopping on-line just as my parents did by catalog when we lived on the farm.
But there are some complications that have been occurring due to our use of our credit cards in different places. This article covers those situations as well as the possible latest on the airline consolidations:

Credit Card Fraud and Your Hotel:

Did you know that your birth-date, Social Security number and home address could be accessible at the swipe of your credit card, from the magnetic strip on the back of the card?

According to a piece by Joe Sharkey, on his blogspot, nearly 40% of recent credit card hacking occurred at hotels through their credit card transactions. Hotels are popular among hackers for this kind of fraud because many of the hotels' customer information is fairly easy to access, either by hacking the payment system, by taking a discarded receipt or by calling the desk for a receipt that isn't theirs.

Since many of the hotels are actually owned locally or regionally they don't have quite the volume purchase advantage of the larger chains that may be corporately owned, so they have to choose between what will bring income in the door or security upgrades. Especially with the recent economic slump, many of the hotels have needed to upgrade with items that would draw in the customers at the expense of their security.

Hotels are especially attractive targets because of the amount of information that they collect from their customers, the fact that their credit card security programs may not be up to date and because their customers
are traveling so they may not notice the fraudulent charges on their cards until sometime much later, if at all.

At first thought, I would suggest prepay for your room through a travel site. However, when I did this on my last trip, they still required my credit card for incidentals. The hotels also don't always accept cash payment.

I would suggest that you use your credit card over your debit card, unless you have one of those debit cards with similar protections of the credit cards. Our bank just issued such a card to us. In any case, I would recommend that you put your receipt in a safe place and compare it and all of your trip purchases with the credit card statement, when it comes in.

When does a Purchase Require a Currency Exchange Fee?:

This used to be a relatively black and white issue. You crossed a border and used your credit or debit card. You knew you would be paying a currency exchange fee. But that's not the case anymore. Our banks have added other parameters to when the fee charges can be applied and we don't even need to leave the comfort of our own homes to enjoy that particular perk. Here is a list of some of the ways that you will receive currency exchange charges:

1. Of course there is the usual and expected way to incur an exchange fee, when you travel across a border and use your credit card for a purchase or for a withdrawal from an ATM.
2. So you choose to use your ATM card instead. You will still be charged to use or withdraw your own
money as well as the ATM charge.

3. You can also incur charges even if you use the branch of your own bank which may be in the country which you may be visiting. They still consider it to be a foreign transaction.

4. Even if you do make the purchase in the US, if the merchant you make the transaction with uses an overseas bank to process your purchase you will be charged a fee even when you are actually paying in US dollars. If you are charged, some of the fee is required to be listed due to new rules about disclosing fees. However, there's still a lot of fine print hiding the rest of the details which could be costing us.

5. Business's like eBay, Amazon Marketplace or an international airline often use a foreign bank to process the purchase and will charge you an exchange fee which you may not even know happened because it's all charged in dollars and the fee will be listed on your credit card statement in dollars without the currency exchange notation which usually appears when you've actually gone out of the country.

Most bank cards, over 90%, and credit union cards, nearly 60%, charge around 3% and 2% respectively for the cross border use of your card. One of the few credit cards and ATM cards to not charge for currency exchange fees is offered by Capital One. Both their credit card and their ATM card, linked with any of their money-market, checking or saving accounts charge no fees. Chase also offers a specialty card through InterContinental/Holiday Inn's Priority Club Rewards program which doesn't charge for foreign transactions.

I usually don't use my ATM cards when I go out of the country. I save my credit card for that, especially when I'm going through an airport or a country overnight which has a different currency exchange than the main country that I'm going to.
For example, I'll exchange US dollars for Euros when I to Belgium and use them in whichever other EU country I may be in. But I will use my card at the airport or in London, if I'm only in and out since their currency is in pounds.
As for on-line shopping or shopping locally, shop only with reputable merchants and check out their payment policies and as always check your credit card receipts and bank statements carefully, lining them up with the receipts that you need to carefully save.

An Unofficial Observation on the Reshuffling of Airline Routes:

I went to Washington DC recently. While I was riding in the hotel shuttle to the airport I was listening to two unfamiliar airline professionals discussing some of the changes due to the recent consolidations. One works for one of the airlines who will benefit and the other works for another airline who will also benefit, both competitors to the consolidators and each other.

I understand that most of this is still unofficial so we just need to keep our eyes and ears
open to catch these notices.

For those of you who are fans of Jet Blue, Airtran or Spirit, it appears that they will be gaining more gate access especially at the Washington DC and New York airports. They didn't mention which airports.

I didn't have time to ask for specifics, so I just let them talk for the ten minutes that they were in the vehicle, especially since half of that time they were deciding whether they could trust each other to even talk about the situation.

Due to Delta's acquisition of Northwest, they were required to let go of some of Northwest's routes which are to go to USAir and Southwest. I also heard that Southwest may be being moved up as a more major airline.

Since Continental and United decided to combine their airlines, they too have had to release some of their routes. USAir will be gaining some international routes and releasing some of their domestic routes as a trade off.

I would say that this is still unofficial because some of this may still be in the decision faze. So we won't know for sure until it is announced or if it will even be these particular details. Gee, I almost feel like retitling this section "As the Globe Turns".

Sources:

http://joesharkeyat.blogspot.com/

http://www.portfolio.com/business-travel/2010/08/11/banks-hit-business-travelers-with-fees-for-purchases-overseas