Visa? Mastercard? They are not "everywhere you want to be" if issued by a USA bank

I was talking with a friend who lives in a European Union country about something I have to do before each trip overseas.

Basically I have to go through my wallet card-by-card and get a customer service rep on the line for each, who transfers me to their "fraud department."

Why? Because if I do not do this, my USA-issued cards may work ONCE in a foreign country (if at all). I am therefore forced to share my travel itinerary with each bank every time I leave the USA.

You might have guessed that I am not your typical USA citizen. In reality I travel quite a bit. But every time I have to go through this cycle, card by card and bank by bank - sharing my itinerary with the bank.

This is contrary to "it's everywhere you want to be." I have to answer all sorts of trick questions - what was the exact amount of your last deposit? Of these two bank branches, which one did you open your account at? What is your social security number?

DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ABOUT THE INSISTENCE ON SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS. Yes, it's the closest thing the USA has to a national ID. However, I have a national ID number in Uruguay and I very rarely have to share it with anyone for anything. Pretty much at the airport/seaport when I arrive and depart (I am a legal resident so no passport is required for entry/exit of that country) I have to show the card. Otherwise no one asks.

Well, that's not QUITE true - everytime you sign a charge slip in Uruguay you are expected to show your national ID or passport and also to write those digits on the slip - but no one verifies that you wrote the correct digits of anything. Just a formality because "that's the way we've always done it."

The USA banking system is just as screwed up as healthcare. Yes, I expect and hope that I will get declined if I try to use my card in Cuba, North Korea, Sudan or Myanmar. There are trade embargoes.

I expect and hope that anywhere on the African continent outside of MAYBE South Africa I should have to do this. (But from Nigeria, definitely not. Nigeria and Ghana should have their internet and phone access to the rest of the world simply cut off until they have governments that enforce their own internal fraud laws. I've had three Nigerian-bullshit-emails in the last six hours. Zimbabwe should get shut off too until they figure out the basics of an honest election!)

But for a goddamn charge by phone to Mexico to pay for TV service each monthe when the bank rep can SEE that each month there is a charge of about the same amount? No....

Or for Uruguay. I go to Uruguay frequently. WHY should i have to give itinerary dates anymore? It should be damn right well NORMAL in my bank's eyes that I have charges from Uruguay.

And why am I upset? Because friends who live in Italy and Spain do not have to go through this bullshit with their banks. Their cards work and they are "everywhere they want to be," as opposed to what I have which is having to sit though the ad and then have it be "everywhere I want to be provided I have shared information I should not have to about my movements!!"

Changing the itinerary

Well right now I'd have been on a flight back to the USA, but it ain't so. I decided to stay another week here - actually that was pretty much decided for me on the first full day I was here. I haven't posted in a week because I've been very much "on vacation." The country is *de facto* closed all week because its holy week

It was down to the wire this afternoon with changing my ticket. I figured, OK, if the airline has a ticket office that should be easiest...

Of course I went right after two of the three employees were returning from lunch. I'd also forgotten that no matter how nice the office look - there's still going to be someplace, somewhere from which you have to take a number. I was reminded of this when two groups of elderly people walked in and grabbed numbers ASAP. No matter I'd been there first by a couple of minutes, I was now 3rd. There's no sense even discussing it.

Well the first group of crones simply wanted to confirm some flight times and details. The second group... I think they were still there after I'd returned to the ticket office a second time!

So this woman who's just returned from lunch looks vaguely afraid of me yet calls my number all the same. The deer in the headlights look is quickly explained by the fact that she's new. Her pat answer to the question "How much will it cost to change my ticket" was "$150 us, usually." She pecks away unconvincingly at the computer and then tells me there is no availability on the flight.

"I know there are seats on that flight, they are available for sale on the internet."

Then she falls back on, "I'm kind of new, this is the phone number for our reservations office in Buenos Aires." I'm dismissed.

I get someone on the phone and he finds availability (imagine that) but he wants me to send him a faxed copy of my credit card along with an authorization letter that he starts dictating to me... um, no. I cut him off and ask him if I can pay it at their ticket office. I confirm (he says) the changes are in the computer under the same confirmation number.

Faxes have a tendency to get lost or the authorization letter isn't quite exactly what they were after or ... something. It's more room for something to go wrong.

Back inside the ticket office I take my wretched number and wait. The "new" girl is busy screwing something up and one of the more experienced employees is trying to sort it out. I explain to this woman that I've been on the phone to their reservations office in BsAs and I simply need to pay the charge rather than sending a fax.

It turns out that no, there is nothing changed about my reservation. No evidence anyone's touched it. She quotes me a price three times higher than what the guy on the phone said. I smile. My little internal steam gauge has gone from the green, over to the yellow and is wavering at the red. On the green side it says 0 and on the red side it says "PUTEAR." (bitch and complain) "This is roughly the same experience as a visit to BPS. Take a number to be poorly attended by someone who through no fault of her own is not well trained. Get sent to the phone to find that a credit card cannot be accepted without a letter being faxed - so I may as well go back to the office where an employee can see me and my credit card because I KNOW a fax is going to get lost. And the price is now higher than it was ten minutes ago during a phone call I must never have made. I am not moving from this spot until we have a solution."

"Well what price did they quote you?"

"Tell you what, a lower one than you just quoted me. When I hear it again I'll let you know."

Finally she quotes the same price as the person on the phone and says "but you have to pay four dollars higher than that here because we have to calculate the tax differently."

"My hotel would have charged me four bucks to have sent a fax, same thing."

She's on the phone awhile longer while they go back and forth over something. Yes, definitely the fax would have been lost and this would be a last minute drama at the airport.

Finally she's ready. She's gotta get one little dig in though: "Let's see if your credit card is approved now."

Hour and a half to rebook a flight.

Americans in Brazil

Time Magazine had an article entitled "Soylandia," covering Brazil's huge growth in soy production. The Mayor of a frontier farm town in Brazil had this to say:

"They come down here and start missing their cable TV and their Internet, and they don't come back."

That seems to be true. Americans all over Central America and the Caribbean go to huge lengths to maintain a link with US television, sometimes using satellite dishes that are 3-5 meters in diameter to pull in the weak edges of the signal beamed at the 48 states. There are entire online forums devoted to that very subject. On the South American continent the northern coastal areas of Colombia and Venezuela can just barely receive the faint signals with very big dishes. In Brazil - not so much.

It's an incredible culture shock going from having 300 channels and 4 megs of internet bandwidth to having 3 snowy channels and dialup that doesn't really perform much better than 19.2 kbps if at all due to the quality of the lines.

I've lived it. November 2002 I'm living the connected life in Bloomington, MN. December 2002 we've crossed the equator into disconnected nothingness. For a few weeks its ok but then you start jonesing - bad.

Planning on escaping to South America and making a local salary? Plan on spending 1/6 of your income on TV and and whatever internet bandwidth you can get.

Oh, and from Uruguay the way that USED to work (and may still) to get a glimpse of ABC, CBS and NBC was to get a DirecTV Latin America box activated in Puerto Rico. The same receiving dish provided by DirecTV Uruguay aims at the same satellite and the Puerto Rican box would still receive those US channels live. As of 2005 this worked, but the DirecTV Latin America folks are a secretive lot and it may not any longer.

Besides the way to get your US TV fix from anywhere with a good internet connection is Slingbox. I have an Uruguayan friend who has a dedicated US DirecTV receiver in my home connected to a Slingbox that only he uses - and that thing is keeping my internet connection busy more often than not.