I do call for ATM cards and CCs.

We had a bank card blocked when we were in Venice, in spite of having called to make note of the countries where we would be traveling.

DH was told security dept. thought the transaction was from Venezuela.

I do it on line as well. At home it takes one minute to notify Visa, Amex and MC.

I used to call it in, or fill out a form online for my travels. I've stopped several years ago, and have never had a problem when using cards at a physical POS in all of the foreign countries I've visited.

I've had airline charges rejected when purchasing online, but that only happens when I'm purchasing outside of my normal purchasing pattern. I normally buy tickets when in India for travel to Thailand. Once I've relocated to Thailand, first time purchasing a ticket in Thailand for travel to India got denied. Called it in, and it cleared, and ever since, never had another problem with that.

Surprisingly, with a credit card billing address in California, US, the company actually detected an actual fraudulent charge in a city near my billing address. And the charge was for less than $10!

Sosmetimes I'll call the bank where I have an ATM card.

I'll question the sophistication of the AMEX algorithms.

Case in point: I have a text message setup for any charge over $10. Consistently for the past year, when traveling in the Pacific time zone -- they easily know this because airfare, rental car and hotel all go on amex -- for any meal charges made after 6 pm pt the text msg arrives at 5am the next morning. This never varies.

However when traveling in other timezones the text arrives instantly, while standing in a line paying for something or whatever.

My checking account is at a small credit union so I always call them to let them know I'll be using my card in ATMs overseas - I would imagine they're a bit faster on the trigger to disable a card for suspected fraud than BoA, Chase, Citi, etc because it's harder for to absorb fraud than it is for the big boys. Haven't had my card disabled yet.

Citi and CapOne have online forms you can fill out, takes 30 seconds. And AmEx says you don't need to call.

CapOne's fraud department seems bipolar. Once I booked a hotel in London (without submitting travel notice since the actual trip was months away), and got a call from their fraud department seconds after I clicked the button to book it - seems the $1 (or I guess the £1) authorization to make sure the card is valid triggered their fraud alert system. But other random online purchases I've made in foreign countries don't trigger it.

Since I'll be taking my first international trip later this year I plan on notifying my local bank and BoA/Chase just to be safe. The last thing I want is to be stranded in Mexico without access to funds of some sort.

My cards have been blocked before. I usually just log in via the internet and add a travel note instead of calling them which may take some time. Also, if I need to make a deposit at the bank, I will let them know at the counter and they will write a travel note for me.

I don't think Bank of America does. I asked their customer service Twitter people if this was possible, and was told that I should call the number on the back of the card, which is their usual response to most things I ask. I'm tweeting because I don't want to call, geniuses! :rolleyes::mad:

Having said that, I will call them almost every time I'm going to be away from home overnight. I've forgotten twice, but both of those trips were domestic.

I hadn't thought about online forms for notifying them until I read this thread. I looked and both BoA and Chase have them for sure.

I always alert my banks of my travels, even if i don't intend to use that card overseas (just in case). Unfortunately my partners card was blocked last time we went overseas, so that taught her a lesson :P

For me, the BoA portal does have an online form for travel report.
Click Help/Support->Travel Information->Use your card while traveling

I always do, these days via online form.

It doesn't always work. Years ago I was in Poland and my ATM card was deactivated. I found out about this from a voice message they left on my home answering machine. They were concerned about some overseas withdrawals, despite my warning. I was spending the last of my cash at a little cafe phone booth trying to resolve it. It didn't work; they were going to send a new card to my home address which did me no good.

A friend was on a long motorcycle trip when his card was suspended. Evidently the frequent, small purchases at gas in several different cities was what did it for him.

I do. I figure it's going to cost me all of 5 minutes to call ahead of time but if I don't, it could cost me a lot of time and money to call them from wherever I'm going.

Awesome, found it! Thanks! ^