Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

There seems to be something of a drift from issuing Visa cards to issuing Mastercards in the UK at the moment thereby reversing the previous trend which was to only issue Visa cards.

Although it doesn’t really matter which you have in the UK, it can matter a lot when you go on holiday and generally it’s best to be carrying both Visa and Mastercard abroad. In that respect the switch of my Halifax Visa card to a Mastercard suits me as that gives me a Mastercard credit card from them and a Visa debit card but others could easily find themselves with a Maestro card and a Mastercard which isn’t a good combination as Maestro isn’t nearly as useful as Visa debit and you’re left with two cards on the same system which isn’t good either.

Not a catastrophe for sure but do make sure that you have both varieties of card handy well in advance of your next holiday.

Of the hundreds of people who have stayed with us over the course of this year, only two or three have paid using the Nationwide credit card which is crazy as they’re the only place that doesn’t charge to use your cards overseas.

Perhaps more crazy though is that of the dozen or so couples who live in Spain and have used us as a pitstop on their way to/from the UK, only one used a Nationwide card as they’re spending quite a considerable chunk of their income on bank charges. Quite how much is staggering. For example, a friend who lives in Brussels let drop once that he just used his Halifax card in the same way that he had done when living in the UK ie he would lift £20 or £30 each time he needed some money and likewise when he was paying for the groceries or whatever.

Most people read the bit in the credit/debit card charging information that says “currency exchange 2.75%” and figure that he wouldn’t have run up much of a bill. However, there is a transaction charge on all overseas use of the card of, at that time, £2 (and I gather it’s now £3) PLUS the 2.75% foreign exchange charge. So, that £20 cost him £2.55 ie 12.75% and, yes, he was paying around 12% of his entire income each month on bank charges!!

Clearly it’s quite different if you’re living abroad vs going on holiday but that minimum charge soon mounts up if you lift small amounts of cash. Whilst it’s much better to use the Nationwide card and pay nothing, if you are using a fee charging card you should lift a minimum of £100 or so each time and thereby reduce your costs to 4.25% to 4.75% depending on your bank and, whenever possible, use your credit card for purchases rather than making cash withdrawals.

See our guide at holiday money for more information.

If you’re living outside your home country then the answer isn’t an obvious one.

Say you’re living in France and you’re from the UK. In that case, the language you use within the family will be English whilst the language you use outside the home will usually be French, won’t it?

Well, not necessarily. For example, in our case for a variety of reasons this year less than 10% of our guests were French. Thus, in practical terms in 90% of the time we ended up using English with the guests. That’s not because they were British mind you because under 10% were; it’s because of that 90% non-French clientele, almost all of them had a preference to communicate in English rather than French (they were largely German and Dutch).

Which has resulted in a series of odd complaints, mainly from the French guests. We weren’t greeting everyone in French, nobody spoke French, etc. Seeing as we can see where the various cars come from as people arrive we actually greet them in the most appropriate language we can muster whether that be English, French or Spanish. If it’s a German number plate then we kick off in English because we know that 99% of them speak it better than we do.

What we can’t obviously do is insist that all the guests speak French as one French couple seemed to want going by their complaint. In fact, they were the only French couple staying that day and were surrounded by Germans, Dutch and Spanish who all chose to speak English to each other whilst having breakfast.

The peculiar common thread behind these complaints is that the French seemingly assume that in a French hotel all the staff will be French and so will all the guests which seems pretty weird in these days of widespread international travel.

Most of the time it’s fine to take a few cards and maybe a travellers cheque with you on holiday, but what do you do if you run out of money when you’re abroad or if your cards/cheques are stolen?

It’s safest to work on the assumption that your cards and/or cheques will be stolen and prepare for that. The way to do this is to keep a note of the card numbers, expiry dates and cancellation phone numbers for each card that you are taking with you. For the travellers cheques you need to note down the cheque numbers and the date & place that you bought them. Take one copy of the note of these details with you (separate from the cards, of course) and leave one behind with a friend or family member. It’s best to cut down on the number of cards too and go with the minimum which is three: one Visa, one Mastercard and one more for when the other two are stolen (keep the third one separate from the other two).

When they are stolen, you just go through the details and call to cancel the cards and cheques. The cancellation numbers are usually reverse charge numbers ie you won’t have to pay to call the banks. It’s useful to look up the number of the international operator and/or AT&T direct number for the countries in which you’ll be on vacation in advance.

In theory, cards can be replaced abroad within 24 hours but this depends on your card, your card company and the banking system in the country in which you’re on holiday. The best cards for replacement are gold/platinum ones but unfortunately they’re also the most attractive to thieves.

However, some countries just aren’t up to replacing cards quite so easily though a combination of language problems and primitive banking systems. Nobody who has stayed with us and had a card stolen in Prague has ever managed to get it replaced whilst they were there.

So what do you do if the card company can’t manage to replace the card? That’s when you need to look into how to get money to yourself from home and there are several ways of doing that which I’ll be covering next.

What’s very striking is the sharp cut-off in guests at the end of the main European holiday season over here.

You can find that you’re completely full one day and then there’s next to nobody for the following week. That’s reflected in the strategies that the various tourist related businesses follow over here with pretty much everything closing down by the second week in September even though there are still quite a reasonable number of tourists still around by that time. Some hotels take the close down even more seriously and don’t reopen until June the following year which, of course, is reflected in the very sharp price increases that you find once you’re in the main holiday season: in some cases hotels double their prices.

We’re still in the completely full stage at the moment and it’s not until well into next week that we get a bit of a rest before the photojournalism festival in Perpignan fills us up again.