The delay in recent posts is because I have spent much of the last week trying to use my credit card to pay for things again. For future reference: when you come to the end of your trip and you are in a country where everything is so cheap, don’t rely on your credit card working.
Unfortunately it seems Bolivia is still working from a manual system that is controlled by a third party “Enlace”. These guys apparently act for Mastercard and Visa here, although my bank in Australia hadn’t heard of them nor had them listed in their directory. Anyways, long story short, if a transaction is to go through, Enlace must given an over-the-phone authorisation so that money can be returned to businesses as per usual.
The only hook for me was that apparently each time I tried to get this going, I was told there was no connection to my bank – the National Australia Bank – and they could not approve my spendings. Not so great when your available cash is not so available. And not so great when all your bank can offer is a bypass authorisation to this process (which was not acceptable to the store-owners) or a phone number in America (which did not connect).
I guess I can only be happy that less than 24 hours after getting a cash advance on my card, it was stolen. Goodbye problems – for now.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
