Trouble with credit cards

Business Money
1

I’m sure I’m not the first person by a long shot here to have this problem - I thought of posting this in the money and business forum, but it appeared to be more er, business oriented.

I tried to use my UK Mastercard to withdraw cash at an ATM for the first time the other day and my account locked up/froze me out. Usually it gets used just for internet transactions, stuff like that. I wasn’t aware at the time that this is actually quite a common occurrence with credit cards used outside of the country they’re registered in because of fraud issues.

Normally this would be fine by just calling up the company and asking them to unblock it, which they did, except then it turned out I can’t actually get to use it with the ATM’s here unless I access a menu on the ATM called ‘other services’, which in turn has other sub-menus that can be used to ‘reactivate’ the card or … something like that.

Except none of the ATM’s here in Taiwan appear to have any such (sub)menu, and when my (Taiwanese) wife called up to ask her own bank, ChinaTrust, how to do it, they claimed the only way to get it unblocked is to contact my own bank … and so I’m back where I started, with a Mastercard that is now pretty much a useless piece of plastic, since I can’t do with it what Mastercard themselves told me to do.

The issue of cards being frozen in countries other than where they’re registered is surely endemic enough that someone else here has had the same problem and found a way to solve it. Does anyone have an idea how to fix this, or had the same issue?

2

This is not all that clear. Normally you’d get it unblocked by calling your own bank. But you’ve already done that, or what?

You can’t “reactivate” a UK card on ATMs here. That would only apply to local cards (on an ATM belonging to the card issuing bank).

3

I unblocked it by calling Mastercard, yes. I went to the ATM’s, and no joy. Went home again to call MCard, and the next guy I got on the customer service line told me I had to ‘access some submenu’ on the ATMs.

I went back out to the ATM - again - and found no such submenu. Went home - again - called them up, and effectively got told off by some idiot for not informing them I’d be using it abroad and he offered me no further help. Which was a bit rich, as I pointed out, given that I’d signed up to it … in an airport, on my way here.

[quote=“smithsgj”]This is not all that clear. Normally you’d get it unblocked by calling your own bank. But you’ve already done that, or what?

You can’t “reactivate” a UK card on ATMs here. That would only apply to local cards (on an ATM belonging to the card issuing bank).[/quote]