Yesterday we had a big scare - OH thought he had lost his wallet when we were 600km from home. Fortunately a false alarm but not before he’d had a couple of hours of major anxiety, checking at the supermarket where he had last used his card and then reporting the “loss” to the police, which took forever. Fortunately we found it before he started cancelling his bank cards.
His wallet contained 2 French bank cards, Barclaycard, CdS, CV, mutuelle card, driving license. It was all the latter that was causing more anxiety than the bank cards because of the likely repercussions of replacing them all.
We realised that we would have no idea how to cope if we ever had to deal with a real loss/theft of a wallet or handbag and wondered how people prepare for such an eventuality?
Any suggestions - NB, we’re not fans of storing stuff “in the cloud” but wonder whether we should?
You can get a replacement carte vitale very quickly as soon as you report it to the CPAM, bank cards can be cancelled very quickly too. Might be an idea to print out on paper all your valuable documents, we all do that so there is hard copies to hand and then stored somewhere safe. Driving licence should be reported to the gendarmerie and all the others where you have things like the mutuelle. You will find they act very fast in cancelling and replacing with new ones but don’t ever leave it very long, contact debit cards can be used easily until stopped by the bank. I and all the family never wear handbags on shoulders, always over the head so snatching is made harder and we put the men’s valuables in them too.
Didn’t help me when I fell in the river, the current snatched mine right over my head with my mobile in it. Fortunately nothing really vital was in there other than dog treats.
It’s something I dread. When I travel I always carry one debit card in another bag for short term issues. I have been very lucky as I have lost my wallet twice in the past three years. The first time it was handed in intact and I got a phone call asking me to pick it up and the second time I found it in the car park where I had dropped it three hours before. I was going to check if I had left it when checking into an event and as I rode by the car park I saw it on the ground.
I often lose my wallet. I just ask my wife and she finds it for me.
Once she lost a diamond ring whilst gardening and she searched for hours and did not find it.
Next day it was on the kitchen table waiting for her, I wonder who found it lying in the grass?
No interest whatsoever. They suggested we contacted our embassy! The only thing he was prepared to do was take a note of OH’s phone (on a scrappy piece of paper) because I suggested someone might keep the money and the bank cards and hand the wallet with his CdS, DL, etc in.
One of my thoughts was if this happens at home we’ve got all our card details etc on our computers. 600kms away, I’ve no idea what my bank a/c / card details are, so how can I cancel it? C/Ag doesn’t even have a special lost card number to ring.
I must confess I always carry a copy of our bank card numbers and the emergency numbers for cancelling them when we travel.
Also photocopies of our passports.
All my bank / credit cards exist in virtual form in my Apple Wallet on my phone, so unless I lost my phone AND wallet together I would still be able to function.
That said I do have a “small wallet” into which goes the few cards I need on a daily basis and the “backups” live in a “big wallet”…
I have scanned copies of my passport, drivers licence etc on my computer.
I don’t know if you use CAs banking app, Ma Banque, because (as helenochka says with her bank) you can instantly freeze or unfreeze your cards, and the app also contains all the card numbers etc.
For what it’s worth, in addition, I have copies of passports/CdS/Carte Grise/Driving licences etc all on my phone, as well as back ups at home scanned into our laptop.
So do mine but I presume that they stop working the moment I cancel or freeze my cards.
I have scans of all my documents on my iPhone.
In my previous post I said that I had lost my wallet twice in the past three years, I thought that I had better point out that as far as I can remember I have never lost one before. That’s if you don’t include things like a black wallet disappearing inside a car with an all black interior.
I have a little wallet, not much bigger than a purse, which I carry with me every time I driver the car. It contains driving licence, French debit card, carte vitale and cash which is never more than €100. I still worry about losing it but at least at home I have 2 English bank cards and my passport.
I can tell you from experience that they still work. Only the physical cards are frozen.
On the upside you also get notification of all the failed payments as they try to use the cards and you can take some comfort in imagining their frustration.
My son lost his CDS last year, the gendarmes said no matter because no one can use it due to the way the photo is incorporated along with the chip and trying to change it is very noticeable. He has a french national ID card so has forgotten about the CDS now. At least if stolen/lost items are reported, you do get it logged etc in case of future problems.
We were expecting that at the gendarmes but he just said he didn’t have any forms for that any more and to go to our embassy (really!) Maybe he thought we were tourists - they did seem pretty disorganised there and he just wasn’t listening propery other than thinking oh they are English. Hence just the scrappy bit of paper to note down our phone number - no proper recording of what we (might have) lost.
See @JohnH’s comment quoted below, but my point was that you could still use a card electronically if you needed to, in the interval between losing the physical wallet and reporting the cards missing.
