Neil Williams wrote:

In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you
intend on travelling abroad.

Since when? I never do.


--
Jeremy Double {real address, include nospam}
Rail and transport photos at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmdoubl...7603834894248/

Jeremy Double wrote:

Neil Williams wrote:

In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you
intend on travelling abroad.

Since when? I never do.

Me neither. I've never had a transaction refused abroad, whereas
occasionally I _have_ had it happen in the UK, especially _after_ chip
and pin, annoyingly. At least as far as the RBS seems concerned, I ought
to notify them when I intend spending my money in half a dozen shops
within an hour!

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate -www.davidhorne.net
(email address on website) "If people think God is interesting, the
onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about.
Otherwise they should just shut up about it." -Richard Dawkins

In article (Neil Williams) writes:
On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:08:59 GMT, "Dik T. Winter"
wrote:
How can I give my bank a prior notification that I decide to buy something?

I did it by telephone.

Ok, so I go into the shop, decide to buy something. Go home, wait until
Monday, phone my bank, and go back again to the shop?

In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you
intend on travelling abroad.

That is not done in the Netherlands at all. It is, in my opinion, a
strange procedure.

Also credit cards are limited in the maximum amount and I think those
gbp7,000 would exceed my limit.

Which is why I used a debit card!

Yes, but that would also be beyond the limit of my debit card.

Note moreover that in the Netherlands most people do not have credit
cards for two of reasons:
(1) It costs money to get a credit card

In the UK it doesn't, or not unless you borrow on it.

So, the situation in the UK is quite different from that in the Netherlands.
And so the use of the different kinds of cards are easily explained.

(2) It is possible that a retailer asks you to pay more if you pay
by credit card

Sometimes this happens in the UK, but not all that often. Minimum
charges by card (credit and debit) are rather more common.

Currently most shops do not have a minimum charge when a debit card is
used. As almost all shops now have the equipment to handle debit
cards and in almost all cases the equipment is directly on-line to
the transaction centre, there is no longer a need for that (the
handling fee is quite small). Formerly for each transaction the
equipment would make a phone call to the transaction centre, which
would take additional money and time.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, +31205924131
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/

In article ,
Jeremy Double wrote:

Neil Williams wrote:

In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you
intend on travelling abroad.

Since when? I never do.

I bought air tickets to Spain a few years ago. A few days later I got
an automated call claiming to be from my credit card company and
offering a number to call back on. I didn't, of course - I called the
usual number and asked if the call was legit. It was and the security
people called back and asked if I'd just bought tickets with Iberia. I
said yes, I was going to Spain. They said it was a good job I'd told
them because otherwise they'd have stopped the card if I'd tried to use
it in Spain.

Oddly I'm still with the same credit card company, but I have warned
them about going abroad since then.

Sam

John B wrote:
On 24 Jun, 20:05, (Neil Williams)
wrote:
In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you
intend on travelling abroad.

It is? I've never done or heard of this, and nor have any of the other
people I've just asked about it...

The older way of doing things was to simply deny all out-of-country
transactions unless the customer had specifically requested to be able
to use their card in a particular foreign country. However, with the
amount of international travel these days -- and the amount of flak they
got for denying people's charges when they went on vacation -- that has
generally fallen out of practice.

Today, many of the better banks have "intelligent" systems that try to
spot detect fraud based on usage patterns. If you rarely traveled out
of your city/country or made large purchases, they might flag such
transactions at the time of sale and either deny them, require the
merchant call them, or even now call the customer's cell phone to
verify. If you _knew_ you were about to change your pattern, you would
call up and let them know to turn off the flags for a particular period.

S

Charles Ellson wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:34:08 -0500, Stephen Sprunk
wrote:
The issue at hand, though, is that neither of those things help the
blind figure out what they're holding; you need different sizes,
braille, or something similar that can be distinguished solely by touch,
and as of today US notes have nothing helpful in that area -- they all
feel exactly the same.

I recall some notes I had a while back when traveling (FRF? NLG? AUD?
NZD?) had clear sections that one could feel and, if given a few
seconds, determine the shape and thus what denomination the note was.
That's an interesting possibility as an alternative to different sizes
or braille. However, I don't know if that would be compatible with the
US's use of cloth notes...

BoE notes have holograms integrated into the (made from rag IIRC)
paper so mixing materials doesn't seem to be a problem.

Interesting. I assume the holograms are attached on top of the rag,
though, instead of integrated into a hole in the material?

With Braille I suspect the difficulty lies with the inconstant thickness
resulting or the eventual flattening of the "dots".

That's one problem; another is that the notes get rather abused in
circulation, being crumpled up, put through washing machines, etc. and
braille relies on having a flat medium, not a wrinkly/soft one.

Punching holes in the notes is probably not an option

Actually, that was my first thought, but obviously the largest notes
would have to have the fewest and/or smallest holes, and you'd have to
study how to do it in a way that wouldn't increase tearing (a problem
for our cloth notes already).

so relying on textural differences seems to be the remaining option
if the size and/or colour can't be changed.

Color can easily be changed for notes above USD1, but that doesn't help
the blind. There are millions of vending machines that take USD1 bills,
though, so any changes to those are impractical. The transition to
coins was supposed to solve that, but hasn't happened yet.

Possibly a variation on the BoE holograms could provide textural
"dots" but how many different denominations of dollar note would need
to be identified ?

We currently have USD 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 notes in circulation.
There also used to be USD 1000 notes in circulation, but they were
withdrawn a few decades ago; I expect USD 200 and 500 notes to
eventually be circulated, as well as a return of the USD 1000 note, in
time due to inflation, but not for several decades.

S

"Matthew Geier" wrote in message
u...

When the Australian Mint patent expires probably. I've heard a story
that the Eurozone investigated using Australian style plastic notes, but
the Australian Mint holds the process very close and wouldn't release the
process for use in Europe. If the Eurozone wanted plastic notes, they
would have to be printed in Australia.

So the only countries that currently have plastic notes all get the
Australian mint to print them for them, so take up of these types of
notes has been limited to smaller Pacific rim counties that don't have
their own currency printing facilities or don't mind 'out sourcing' it to
Australia.

What about Romania, however? They have a 1,000-lei note.

"Phil Wieland" wrote in message
...

So the only countries that currently have plastic notes all get the
Australian mint to print them for them, so take up of these types of
notes has been limited to smaller Pacific rim counties that don't have
their own currency printing facilities or don't mind 'out sourcing' it to
Australia.

Doesn't the Isle of Man have plastic notes? Are theirs Australian as
well?

Not to my knowledge and not in my experience as I was there not too long
ago.

"John B" wrote in message
...
On 24 Jun, 20:05, (Neil Williams)
wrote:
In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you
intend on travelling abroad.

It is? I've never done or heard of this, and nor have any of the other
people I've just asked about it...

--
Neither have I as it is none of their business. One time I told them that I
planned to be abroad and not to go into a panic. when they see withdrawals
from a non-UK bank on my card. They said that I would need to supply them
with an itinerary, to which I most firmly told them: NO!

"Hugh Brodie" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
"Hugh Brodie" wrote in message
...

Speaking of hyper-inflation, it's fun looking at the website of the
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe http://www.rbz.co.zw to see the daily exchange
rate of the $Z vs the $US. Yesterday, it was 5,817,000,000; today it's
6,718,000,000. They have just issued $Z 50,000,000,000 notes ("bearer
cheques"). And it will cost you $Z 1,800,000,000 to mail a postcard to
the US. http://www.zimpost.co.zw/postalrates.html


It's a shame that there are no images of currently circulating Zimbabwean
notes or coins.

A few notes here - buying a beer in Hara
http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgur...%3Den%26sa%3DG

On the other hand - the Zimbabwe stock market has been one of the best
performing in the world. The industrial index which was at 1,000 a couple
of years ago, is now 5,160,207,611,002.24 .
http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=478&cat=8

More big numbers: your average Zimbabwe stock portfolio has tripled since my
last posting - the industrial index is now at 16,421,906,235,086.20 (but
still under $Z 10 billion to the US$) . Good housing is in the $Z 3-5
quadrillion range. Market capitalization of a major local company (Delta) is
$Z 26.2 quintillion. http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=653&cat=8

hb.