Monday, June 27
A pox on all credit card services! It was an extremely frustrating morning after filling our grocery cart, going through the check-out and having our credit card transaction not be authorized. Now, we are not exactly naive travelers or inexperienced when it comes to managing credit cards during international travel, so it was very upsetting to learn that our cards had been de-authorized. This was after letting the bank know when, where and for how long we would be traveling. In fact, I had phoned them within the past few weeks to update our travel location, but apparently, nobody pays any attention to that.
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| Elaine, getting us back to the boat on the dinghy |
Allow me to back up just a couple of steps. Several weeks ago, we discovered that one of our credit cards (we carry two accounts) wouldn’t work. When I called the bank, they informed me that they had sent updated cards to our home address, and that all we had to do was use the new cards now that the previous cards had been cancelled. As idiotic a move as this was, since they knew we were on an extended travel schedule 3000 miles from home, we just decided we would not use that card anyway, and use the other account. Then the second bank did the exact same thing. When asked why they sent out new cards, even though the old ones had a year before expiration, they said it was a “service” to their customers to automatically extend the expiration date.
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| Bruce Peninsula |
The bottom line was that the bank said they were bound by California State law to de-authorize the card and we were just SOL. So here we were, trying to pay for food and fuel in a small village in remote Ontario, Canada with a bad card. The bank’s solution was simple - “Just give us the address where you are staying, and we’ll mail you new cards within 5 business days.” Half of the islands where we anchor are uninhabited! No streets, no cottages, no postal service… And they’re going to catch up to us on the boat and hand us our new cards. Yeah, right. After over a half hour on the phone (being charged international roaming charges, even though it is supposed to be a toll-free number) I finally got through to a supervisor in the credit card fraud department. She managed to tweak something with our account and said it might work now, so try to buy something while she waited on the phone. I went to a restaurant at the end of the dock and tried to buy a cup of coffee with a credit card - their card machine was broken. I then went up to the street and started walking, trying to find some vendor who would take my card (all while the bank person was waiting on the line, and I was paying roaming charges). I found an LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario - a wine shop), went in, grabbed the first bottle of wine I saw off the shelf and went to the register to use my card. It worked. The bank promised that it would continue working. Just in case, we walked to the local bank (on the highway, outside of town) and got some cash.
By this time, we figured it would have to be a short cruising day, so we took off toward Cape Croker and anchored in a nice, secluded harbor about 15 miles away.
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| Lighthouse on Cape Croker |
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| River otter pups feasting on a fish carcass |
Tuesday, July 28
We have two more days before the next front is forecast to pass through with 20+ knot winds. Our plane reservations for the quick visit home are 10 days away. We don’t want to be stuck too far away if the wind blows for too long, so we decided to start heading in the direction of Midland, where we will moor the boat while we are gone.
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| Taking advantage of the autopilot to knit |
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