Money Issues while in Israel

Take a moment to address this issue today! Past and current experience has brought forward the following issue. This post will address issues with your banking cards while planning your trip and while on your trip to Israel. We have had peoples cards declined while trying to pay for their tour, because the amount was outside there normal spend habits. The card companies always request you notify them of any changes outside your normal spending trends. The banks today are very quick to respond to what they suspect may be fraud, because they are on the hook for any amounts charged to your account, not done so by you. Therefore they will shut down your cards very quickly, then, they wait to hear from you. When you are planning a trip you need to notify your credit card and debit card companies as to what you are doing. On the back for your credit card and debit card is a customer service number. You need to call that number and notify them of your pending plans, giving them the details, such as dates of travel and country’s of travel, (ie. Italy and Israel). If you do not do this before you go, when you try and access money with you debit card or purchase something with your credit cards, don’t be surprised when your card is declined. Your normal spending patterns and locations are captured by the banking computers, when you suddenly change your normal spending amounts and locations it flags the banking computers and they start declining your transactions, because they assume that you are outside your normal spending patters and they have not received a call from your, telling them that you are on a trip, they assume that someone is using your cards illegally and they shut down your cards until you call complaining or until you notify them. On every tour I have pilgrims who have money problems because they did not call the credit card/debit card customer service number before they left on their tour. It is twice as hard to do it when you are already in Israel, as you are now dealing with an international phone numbers and there is always a delay due to time changes and you will normally have a waiting period (24 to 48 hours) for them to re-activate your cards once they shut them down. I hope this post will help make someone’s trip less stressful by doing a little pre-planning.