Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

What is with this country? The second busiest airport in the country is closed, trains are stranded and thousands of people can’t get out of their houses. All because of a relatively small amount of snow.

What on earth would it be like if there was another mini iceage like they had in the 1800s when the Thames was regularly frozen?

Ironically, it would probably be a whole lot easier going. The reason for many of the problems this year is simply that the UK as a whole simply isn’t prepared for really cold weather. Were it to be a regular feature of our climate then more money would be thrown at the problem and many of the difficulties that we’re currently experiencing would go away. After all, colder countries don’t have all these issues.

We were tootling along quite nicely with our various regular activities until a week or two back but now it’s getting to the point that we can barely fit everything in.

It’s mainly down to the Christmas activities that the school seem to be throwing at us almost daily which are difficult to fit into what was already a reasonably full though doable schedule. Thus we have school photos to deal with, school calendars to come in the next day or two, the school Christmas fair this week, the school play next week, the school Christmas pantomime the following week and, no doubt, many more Christmasy things that we’ve forgotten or not been told about yet.

Naturally, there are also things like Christmas cards to write, Christmas presents to be bought, the Christmas markets to be seen and lots more besides.

And, of course, there are the non-Christmas things to be done which, for me, seems to be largely taken up with assorted course assignments though there’s lots of non-course things to be done too.

We signed up again for Fitness First again way back at the start of August when they’d one of their offers running… “sign up for BodyFirst, get three free personal trainer sessions by paying £35 now and you’ll get it refunded after 20 sessions”. Well, that’s what we were told at the time anyway.

It turns out that we should have been given a card to stamp for each of those 20 sessions which presumably lists a couple of extra conditions that we weren’t told about. First, those 20 sessions had to be taken within 8 weeks of signing up. That shouldn’t be a problem as we were attending 4 or 5 times a week so those 20 sessions were completed in late August or possibly early September. Except that 1) we didn’t have that card to get stamped, 2) their computer was down quite a bit towards the end of August so our attendance wasn’t recorded and 3) it’s quite common to get waved through without the membership card getting swiped. Net effect of that was that we have only 16 recorded attendances in the 8 weeks ie they swiped the card just twice a week on average.

Second problem was those “free personal trainer” sessions. It seems that they weren’t optional as, presumably was stated on the card which we didn’t get, not doing them within the 8 weeks means no refund of the £35. On that particular point, we were explicitly told by the membership guy at the time that we could take them at any time so I guess he doesn’t read the contracts that he’s signing people up to.

I’d say at this point that it was important to read all the conditions of a contract with Fitness First but seeing as we weren’t given the contract, we couldn’t do that.

Things were going really well with the football coaching yesterday afternoon as with it being the week for the “FA Cup” the kids were all taking it really seriously.

One of the best players was a beefy kid who was unusual in being good both as a player and as a keeper. It was no surprise that his team were in the final two for the playoff.

And then it went to pieces. In a very fast paced match, the first goalkeeper let in four goals in a row and we saw the beefy kid first lie down on the floor then head off for his parents on the touch-line where the tears and wailing started. And kept going and then went on some more. In fact, he ended up wailing right through the rest of the match whilst another three goals were let in.

OK, not such a good game for his team, but the wailing seemed way over the top.

Cash cards are much more limited in function than credit and debit cards but they have one really big advantage abroad: without the PIN, they’re useless and therefore they’re of much less interest to thieves.

Cash cards for international use come in only two versions which are Cirrus and Plus. Both are linked to your bank account although you can also get prepaid versions of both.

These cards can’t be used in shops to make purchases and are limited to withdrawing cash from ATMs. Some banks put these symbols on their cards without considering that it means the cards can be used overseas so the charging for overseas transactions is sometimes less than clear. Once or twice I’ve found banks who were so sure that their card couldn’t be used abroad that they had no provision for making additional charges in their terms and conditions (and didn’t in my case, but don’t rely on that).

Although it’s not always clear, you can use Cirrus cards in all Mastercard branded ATMs and Plus cards in all Visa branded ones. You need to check that the country you’re going to has ATMs (not all do!) as these cards can’t be used over the counter in banks. Also, check that it will be practical to use them eg in India I found that ATMs were not widely available and Rarotonga didn’t have any ATMs until quite recently.

Charges on these are made up of a transaction charge of around 2% with a minimum of £2/$2 plus a foreign currency conversion fee of around 3%. It’s therefore best to make withdrawals of £100/$100 at a time to minimise these charges.

Downsides are basically those charges and the fact that you can only use these cards in an ATM. For those living in the UK, some pre-paid cards eliminate all charges and if you’re in the American military a USAA card works in much the same way. If your bank is a member of the Global Alliance (Bank of America, Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays, BNP, Deutschebank and Westpac) then you can withdraw cash from one of the other member banks ATMs without the transaction charge (you still get charged the foreign exchange fee).

I’m going to work my way through the various ways you can take money abroad over the next week or two in the travel money series. I’ve already covered cash, travellers cheques, credit cards/charge cards and debit cards and will be covering prepaid cards in the next episode.