My friend couldn't use her own bank card without her bank's permission.

[woodsprite]

16. We've had good and bad experiences with this.

The bad experience was the first time. We were traveling and hadn't been told that we needed to notify the bank. By the time we got to our destination, we couldn't use our cards to pay for our camping. We had to use all of our cash while the bank cleared our cards for use. We had stopped in every state between Delaware and NC on the same day to buy lunch, get gas, snacks etc. Then in NC we pulled into the campground.

Now, I prepay for camping AND carry enough cash to get us through the first week, just in case.

A year or so ago we had to put a fraud notification on our card. After that they would call whenever something totally out of the ordinary was purchased or if anything was over $50 (I think). We bought a sofa and sure enough, they called hubby on his cell phone to have us authorize the purchase. We were standing right at the cashier.

A few days ago the bank called because they had several $1.99 charges to our Debit card (hubby's fault for using that one) for some overseas web gaming company, then a $500 transaction to Hewlett Packard. They put the $500 back in our account and are trying to track down the culprit. They asked us to officially dispute the $1.99 charges. We think lax handling of paperwork at the place we store our trailer is at fault. We have a dedicated credit card only for them now. If something odd gets charged to it, they'll know where it came from.