Credit Card Surprise

In the letter “Winging It to Estonia…” (Aug. ‘16, pg. 12), a reader wrote that his credit and ATM cards wouldn’t work in Estonia because he hadn’t notified his bank about his last-minute itinerary change to Estonia.

I had a similar experience on a Rhine and Moselle river cruise aboard the River Navigator with Vantage Deluxe World Travel (Boston, MA; 888/514-1845, www.vantagetravel.com) in May 2015.

I had notified my bank that my wife and I would be in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, France and Switzerland during our trip. Nevertheless, early in the morning on the day we were to disembark the ship in Basel, Switzerland, I was informed by the front desk that my credit card wasn’t being accepted for our final payment of our onboard charges.

I had used my card at previous port stops on this trip without a problem, so I knew it was usable in Europe. I then provided my debit card and got the same result. 

The ship’s personnel were quite helpful and allowed me to use their phone to call my bank. After about an hour of call transfers and waiting on hold, I was finally able to resolve the problem and use my original credit card. 

What I discovered later was that on the night before our disembarkation, the ship had made a charge (and then a credit) of one cent to my credit card to determine if it was valid. However, the transaction had gone through a bank in Cyprus, which was not on my list of countries, so my bank had put a hold on my cards.

The good news was that the ship was small enough (134 passengers) for the helpful staff to provide personal service. 

It was a learning experience but not one that could have been planned for in advance.

RON MERLO

Glendale, CA