Yours truly noticed something ridiculous like 250 euros had been taken from my account around 2022 by Credit Agricole. It was definitely excessive as it was a flat rate FX charge of ?1.25 or even 1.50 euros? * every time I’d bought a Kindle book on Amazon - £0.99p every one - in the past 9 months so. I’d used the debit card on my Credit Agricole account as covid meant my UK card had expired and I’d not been able to travel to collect the renewed card. Having left it there, I’d forgotten to reset the Amazon default card to Wise.
So the flat rate charge was on every book I’d bought which cost much less. This was in addition to a loaded exchange rate so they were making on that too.
I’m trusting of my bank, if no shocks on the balance I might have looked at it quickly once a year. Unwise with French banks and also telecoms here, in particular.
The transactions with these charges dominated the bank statement and jumped out as totally Why is she doing this as soon ss you looked at any page.
Credit Agricole refused to refund anything or make any concession. Apparently I have a conseiler, always, with them assigned to my account. But I’m not sure what they do. A quick look once a year at the account and a quiet word to the customer Is this something you intend to do, is not part of their duties.
Since then Credit Agricole has found another way to steal from my account - they ignored written and verbal multiple cancellations of a debit card, and they keep taking nearly 50 euros a year out of my account for it. I don’t receive or want the card, as I took out a different type in the same initial conversation as the first verbal cancellation that they said - and I particularly asked and they said - no written cancellation needed they would proceed to cancel the old at the same time as issuing the new.
So they actioned a request for new, and failed to cancel old. Both arranged in the same conversation in French very clearly and subsequently reconfirmed in writing and several times verbally, and they issued the new card (after their usual delays and mistakes) and won’t stop taking the money for it ftom my account nor refund the amount they’ve stolen. I’ll have to go to mediator and probably worse this year but their dishonesty sickens me.
@toryroo said:
We don’t go to the UK that often and I’ve just been online on CA and see I’ve racked up at least 20e, maybe 30e of frais carte UE hors zone euro. The biggest over 6e and that for, I think an 85e shop at Lidl. I feel very stupid I had no idea the fees would be so high! We used our UK account a lot if the time thank goodness but it’s probably empty now. How do I avoid this issue in the future?
I think tory’s annoyance are the charges levied by CA when using CA card for sterling purchases so advice given to use a wise card for such transactions.
In the past I have fallen foul of the same scenario if visiting the uk by using my CA card without thinking.
We are due to make a short uk trip soon for a wedding and I will make sure my CA card is not in its usual place in my wallet and place my UK bank card there instead.
When I went to England in 2023 I forgot that I had never used my 2 English cards in anger and thus had no idea of the pin codes. This meant that I couldn’t even use sans contact because that only works if you have once used a pin code.
Thus I had to use my La Poste debit card for everything which resulted in the sort of charges that @toryroo has discovered. With one exception, I treated my old friends, who put me up, to a meal at a local eatery and the cashier, on seeing my card, asked ‘pounds or euros?’ Puzzled but thankfully I said ‘euros’. Result a direct debit to La Poste and no charges.
No. Content product selection differs according to country and amazon.fr is extremely poor for books and pants for music, also generally very poor compared to several other amazon countries. It’s really annoying and this and the problems with Credit Agricole corrrelates with many other things we discover about France when we live here.
Exactly how I do it. I leave a certain amount of money in the UK from my private pension every year and just use my UK cards from First Direct when in the UK. That way, there’s no transfer of money involved at all.
Hum if your plan is to use the Wise card in the UK, say, for buying in shops and in cash machines.
… umm remember your PIN for that in Wise, is not the same code as you use to log in.
It used to be hidden on the card details page in the app. The screen looked complete, but what wasn’t clear was that to see the PIN for in-person use, you had to scroll the screen down to see that field. But there was no indicarion on the screen that there was any more and you had to push the screen up to see more. That included the PIN ahem.
And really try hard not to have to reinstall or even possibly update the Wise app during your trip abroad. Lots of things may be reset unpredictabiy, on some updates. You might strike one of those, after trying and failing to find the PIN in the app, if you deleted and reinstalled the Wise app thinking there might be a bug or an app update needed.
This could lead to you having to take 2 days out of a 3day trip to the UK, to be on the phone to Wise as you then hit ID re-verification problems and can’t use the card to do what you planned to do in the UK and can’t use the app.
Not that any of the above could possibly have happened to me on my trip to the UK earlier this yesr.
And on a completely different topic, generally if I give advice here or anywhere it’s usually based on mistales I myself have made, or occasionally mistakes someone very close to me has made.
If you have an iPhone, you can add your Wise card to Apple Wallet in order to do contactless payments without the PIN.
They also have an option to set up a digital Wise VISA card (no physical card) with a different card number, if you prefer to use that within Apple Wallet and not your physical card, or to keep expenditure categorised.
In Wallet you can also designate any card as your “express travel card” so that it works with touch-in touch out travel systems such as the London underground, or buses.
Is there not a limit on that? eg 50€ here in France. And I also find contactless with my card does not always work. can that also be an issue with Apple Wallet?
