Credit Card Holiday Checklist.

As with many visitors to the fabulous state of Florida, my family and I like to spend some time in and around the many great shopping malls and outlets, which, thanks to the exchange rate provide overseas visitors with the opportunity to find some real bargains.
For those delicate purchases or slightly more expensive one, the sensible payments are via a credit card with its added security of providing insurance for your purchase.
Exchange rates between the various card providers do differ slightly, however in my experience this is very small. Probably the best value for money card so far is that offered by the post office, although they don’t provide any internet based banking option, which can be inconvenient at times.

My advice though before you rush out and fill your pockets with a whole host of different cards, is this;

1.      Speak to your current card provider(s) and ask them what their rate is on that day. Then use the likes of the Travelex web site to make a comparison.
2.      Confirm what charges if any you will incur when using your card abroad.
3.      Confirm the level of insurance is provided for items bought with the credit card, and what if any is the excess charge.
4.      Then if you are happy to proceed to use their card on holiday, inform them of your departure and return dates, this helps avoid those embarrassing occasions when you are at the till with a queue behind you only to be told by the cashier’ Sorry your card has been rejected” It also helps your provider identify any potential fraudulent usage after your return.

Remember many retailers in Orlando and Florida require any payments being made with a credit card to be accompanied with photographic identification. Whilst this may seem a bit of a bind, it is actually set up and operated in a way so to prevent the fraudulent use of credit cards, and remember if you are asked what currency you want the transaction in, ALWAYS choose the local currency, doing so is cheaper and saves you incurring extra charges of around 4%

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 26th, 2010 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Blogroll, General Advice, misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.