My friend and I are going to London for 2 weeks this spring and I get to spend my birthday there. How cool! Anyway, we’ve been dithering on how to pay for stuff while we are there. The house we’re renting is paid for in advance. I’m talking incidentals, like meals out and tourist stuff. I’m a “cash is king” kinda person so was thinking of withdrawing chunks of cash periodically from ATMs over there. I’ll check with my bank as to fees.
What do Dopers say? Charge everything and deal with big@ss bills when I get home? Bring dollars and convert? Traveler’s checks (hopelessly 20th century!)?
If you don’t pay with cash, do American credit cards physically work, or is there different swiping technology in place? Come to think of it, the same question arises with regards to ATMs.
If you do pay with credit, is there a surcharge for racking up charges in a foreign currency? Is it usually worse than simply taking money from an ATM?
We ran into this in France, about 6 years ago. Called our credit card companies, they assured us our cards would work in the ATMs. But… they didn’t. Out of the 4-5 cards we brought, all of which were supposed to work in the ATMs, only one did.
Not sure what we would have done had that one not worked.
I had no problem using my American credit cards and ATM cards when I was there six or so years ago. My bank(s) imposed a (small) fee for every transaction, but I’ve been told that you get a better exchange rate going this route than trying to do traveler’s cheques or exchanging physical dollars for pounds. Make sure you know what fees you’ll be hit with, and you may want to make larger, less frequent withdrawls to get hit less often.
Withdrawing cash from an ATM gives a pretty good exchange rate - close to the inter-bank rate I think. If your bank does levy a fee, just take out the maximum at a time. My UK bank allows £300 a day, and that should be plenty!
I’d let your bank know you are going to be using your cards in the UK anyway, there’s a risk that they could cancel them for suspicious activity otherwise.
If you do use a credit card, Mastercard and Visa are widely accepted, but American Express less so.
Withdrawing from ATMs works great (if your pin works, and even if it does, you might have to memorize it in numbers if you currently think of it as a word - the letter layout is different in the UK). Credit cards are also good. Either one gives you a more favorable exchange rate than any other method. Make sure you notify both your bank and your credit card that you will be traveling, to avoid any troublesome fraud holds.
When withdrawing large sums of cash, be careful about keeping it on your person. London isn’t the worst for pickpockets (whassup, Rome?) but there have been reports of increased pickpocketing and there’s more petty theft than in, say, New York City. So don’t do anything with your cash you wouldn’t do in NYC (ie, flash it ostentatiously, keep it in big wads in your back pocket, etc.)
I don’t really see the big difference between putting things on a credit card and withdrawing cash. Sure with one you get “a huge bill” but with the other you have “huge withdrawals” in the same amount, so what’s the diff?
We have ‘chip and pin’ whereby UK and EU cards have a chip and require a 4-digit pin rather than a signature at the til. However, London retailers are used to Americans not having this, in which case they will just ask you to sign as normal.
As for ATMS, make sure you have a four digit PIN. I believe some US cards have six digit, and these won’t work.
BTW, you can use cards pretty much anywhere these days – little corner shops, pubs etc. Just remember that small retailers such as these often have a minimum spend for card transactions, such as £10, so it’s worth have a bit of cash on you.
UK ATMs do not charge a fee (except a few privately owned ones which will state the fee very clearly). Your bank, however, may well do, so it’s worth checking. I believe Bank of America has some contra-deal with Barclays (big UK high street bank) whereby these transaction fees are waved. Might be worth checking out.
ATMs and card transactions are always a better deal than exchanging dolars for pounds, and no one uses travellers cheques any more. I don’t believe there’s much difference in exchange rates between ATMs v card transactions. But check with your bank for hidden charges.
Finally, if a retailer asks if you want your card purchase done in dollars, always say no. You will get a better exchange rate via interbank rates rather than whatever money-making rate the retailer is pushing.
I just went to London a couple months ago (for work).
You do run into problems in that some places won’t take credit cards. It’s not bad but you do need to ask before you start buying or ordering food. This is especially true on the small mom&pop side shops/pubs etc.
London has an extra security ‘thing’ on their credit card which we don’t have. This causes some confusion and many times they have to do extra steps in order to process the card. Didn’t have problems with this in more ‘higher end’ stores but the smaller stores/pubs can get them irritated.
I had issues drawing cash from my credit card. I was supposedly able to but when I was there was not able to. I never figured out why or called to ask but I wished I had converted more cash.
Quick answer - just ask if they take an American CC before you order food/shop. You will run into more situations where they don’t but it isn’t too bad. However, I’ve been to 3rd world countries that were better at taking credit cards
Also, if you run across any place that says they take U.S. currency as well…DON’T. Their conversion rate is attrocious. ALso, don’t flag down a cab without cash. Their cabs don’t seem to take CCs
I was in London last year and used a mix of cash (from ATMs) and credit cards. As mentioned, ATMs will give a better exchange rate, because credit cards typically have a 2-3% foreign transaction fee. I tried to mostly use cash, but I didn’t let the 2% fee stop me from using a credit card when that was more convenient. The catch is, coming home with £150 in your pocket, or buying $ with it at a currency exchange, is much more of a loss than the 2-3%. London can burn through cash quickly, but it’s worth depleting your cash and switching completely to credit cards for the last day or two.
Also, first thing, buy an Oyster card, to ride public transportation.
You will want to read up on Oyster cards before you get here, as the oyster card is just a plastic smartcard onto which you load different types of tickets (eg, one day travel cards, pay-as-you-go, etc). Just asking the ticket guy for an Oyster card won’t get you very far.
Most UK ATMs don’t have a transaction fee, even if you don’t bank with the owner of the ATM. It’s just a recognized service, so any that do have such a fee will have it clearly marked. My bank charged a fair exchange rate and 1% on top of that to withdraw pounds, which was significantly cheaper than the rate my credit and debit cards charged.
Pound coins will be very useful for the Underground, for meals and drinks at bars, for donations at all the entirely free museums, and for street vendors should you desire, so definitely take them. The euros won’t be very useful at all.
It is a good idea to go to your bank and get some pounds before you leave. The exchange rate is pretty good, and when you arrive in London you are not stuck finding an ATM or changing money when you are tired from a long flight. Get enough for a cab or the Tube to town, and enough to eat, and maybe deal with things before you find a bank.
I don’t know about London, but we bought multi-day tourist transit passes in Berlin and Copenhagen and they worked great. Some of them give you free or reduced cost admission to attractions, and being free to hop the Tube for short distances is really useful. You can probably get this at Heathrow but I’d check.
A couple of years ago, I was going to Italy for a couple of weeks so I called my bank. I gave them the dates and everything, they put it in my record. My first day there, I used an ATM in Rome and immediately got a call on my cell from the bank. It took ten minutes to get through various automated crap to tell them that, yes, as I told them last week, I am in Italy. The call cost me something like $10. Nice work, bank.
To echo the chorus of others, every time I’ve gone to Europe, I just use ATMs. I pull out a hundred pounds or euros, spend until it’s gone, then get more, etc. Haven’t run into any issues yet.
Stash extra cards in various pockets and luggage. Same with cash. Several years ago, my wallet was stolen in the Madrid airport, shortly after arriving. If I’d had credit cards stashed away, I wouldn’t have had to abort the trip. And wear an around-the-neck-and-under-the-shirt wallet, with an un-cuttable cord.
Oh, and memorize the “numbers” of your ATM password. Some keypads are numbers-only.
That’s annoying. Regardless, if you’re at all planning on using your credit card while you’re abroad, it’s a very good idea to call your issuing bank, and let them know this ahead of time. Otherwise, it’s very likely that your card will get declined when you try to use it, as foreign usage is a big red flag for card fraud.
If you’re only going to London (or elsewhere in the UK) then there’s not a lot of point in taking the Euros. I imagine £200 in coins must be quite heavy, but if you don’t care about that you will be able to spend them.
We’re hoping to do a day trip to Paris. The travel agent where we bought our airline tickets has packets of Euros and pounds (starter kits) so we’ll do that just to have pocket money once we hit London and the kit should enough Euros for Paris cafes.
Rick Steves (boring, but his books are packed with info) says to get a wad of cash every few days from the ATMs and I like that thinking. I will check with my bank re: any transaction fees. My card is both a credit and debit with a 4 number PIN so I should be o.k.
We plan on buying the Travelcard before we go. That way we will have unlimited public transport for the time we will be there. Travelcards are for 7 days though so we have to buy 2. Oh well, that’s fine.
We’re staying in Holland Park so let me know if you have any suggestions for neighbo(u)rhood pubs, restaurants, offbeat places.
