It's getting difficult to lead an extravagant lifestyle. Jet setting across many countries. Charging random expenses to a credit card. Even having called TWICE to inform BOA that I was going to be doing all this crazy stuff, they were nice enough to shut off my credit card, again, again. It was really hard to pay for dinner with a non-functional credit card. Ok, so now I'm just being dramatic, when in fact I have started to keep cash on hand, and using the cards less and less.
Here's what's funny. For months how I have had standing charges on my card. Health Insurance (from the UK), Gym membership (SA) and car insurance (SA). The only new charges are a plane ticket and a US$ 14 concert ticket. And my card got shut off.
Bastards. If it weren't for the billion points I have accumulated on there, I would cancel that account. That, and also the fact that I have all these standing things which need to go through every month.
On a related note... I called Capital One last week. I initially applied for a card with them since they don't charge foreign transaction fees. A HUGE bonus for me cause I get nailed with these fees. That is until I found a bank I can use here which has a BOA agreement to not charge fees, hence I'm carrying around more cash than I use to. So anyway, the card never showed up to the the apt that I stayed in for a few weeks before I came here. After a long brew-ha-ha with the manager, they agreed to send me a card to SA. Which never showed up. I emailed then, but they wouldn't address this over email, and said I had to call to report the card missing. Well screw that, I didn't have skype then. I thought about the card here and there, but really wasn't too concerned. The mail here is sooo fraudulent that I figured somebody had stolen the card, and would hopefully be kind enough to buy a water well for a small village (or a villages) or warm clothes for homeless kids, hopefully not use all the money at once and buy a BMW...
So I called them, and they kindly informed me that the card was carrying a US$ 10,000 balance, which included significant amounts of pornography, and trips to Aruba. OF course, my first question was if the porn was bought here, or in Aruba? Maybe there is money to be made taking porn to Aruba. I'm kidding. There is no money to be made in porn. And the card wasn't stolen (kind of a shock). It had been mailed back to the US. Since I had figured out a way to avoid fees, by getting cash regularly, I decided to just cancel the card. I really had assumed that this would be a much more convenient card to carry than this damn BOA (which has now been shut off a total of 5 times, in 3 countries).
After a heated conversation, BOA has agreed to call me next time (I'm optimistic, I know it will happen again) they plan to shut off the card. I've also given them the name of somebody else to call before shutting it off, in case I'm unreachable (like in 2 weeks when I'm in Lesotho). Jason- if they call, keep the card on. I have vision of the bakkie (my car) being out of petrol (gas) and my card having been long shut off, and me giving impromptu English classes, or medical care for cash..
