Serenity at last!

[Sydneyfan]

Today, I had a class early in the morning and have a long break until my next classes in the afternoon, I've been running out of catch so I thought I'd head downtown to an ATM to withdraw from my credit card.

The lack of ATM's accepting Visa credit cards in Korea (particularly outside Seoul) is mind-boggling, I live in a city of over 600,000 which hosted 3 matches in last year's World Cup yet to everyone's knowledge there is only ONE atm in the whole city which accepts Visa credit cards! Plenty of stores accept purchases with Visa yet only one atm in the whole city lets you withdraw some bloody cash.

I get to the downtown area and head towards some banks as a fellow teacher instructed me on which bank was the one which accepts Visa credit cards. The wires must have been crossed somewhere as Bank No.1 achieves no success, Bank No. 2 no luck and so on for over an hour and a half, I started asking bank staff in broken Korean/English but they either didn't know or led to the atm I had already tried.

Finally salvation, I see a couple of backpackers, they happened to be a French guy and his French-Korean girlfriend, the girl asked a few shop owners who instructed me to head to a bank I had already tried, yet out of the 6 atms in this bank, one of 4 I hadn't tried finally accepted my Visa card. Thank heck for that! I made sure I took note of this particular atm and the bank and withdrew a heap of cash in the hope I don't have to go through that again!

Has anyone else ever had similar encounters overseas or back in Oz, where you spend ages trying to do something so seemingly simple which ends up being a big ordeal?

 

[knuckles]

Originally posted by Sydneyfan
Today, I had a class early in the morning and have a long break until my next classes in the afternoon, I've been running out of catch so I thought I'd head downtown to an ATM to withdraw from my credit card.

The lack of ATM's accepting Visa credit cards in Korea (particularly outside Seoul) is mind-boggling, I live in a city of over 600,000 which hosted 3 matches in last year's World Cup yet to everyone's knowledge there is only ONE atm in the whole city which accepts Visa credit cards! Plenty of stores accept purchases with Visa yet only one atm in the whole city lets you withdraw some bloody cash.

I get to the downtown area and head towards some banks as a fellow teacher instructed me on which bank was the one which accepts Visa credit cards. The wires must have been crossed somewhere as Bank No.1 achieves no success, Bank No. 2 no luck and so on for over an hour and a half, I started asking bank staff in broken Korean/English but they either didn't know or led to the atm I had already tried.

Finally salvation, I see a couple of backpackers, they happened to be a French guy and his French-Korean girlfriend, the girl asked a few shop owners who instructed me to head to a bank I had already tried, yet out of the 6 atms in this bank, one of 4 I hadn't tried finally accepted my Visa card. Thank heck for that! I made sure I took note of this particular atm and the bank and withdrew a heap of cash in the hope I don't have to go through that again!

Has anyone else ever had similar encounters overseas or back in Oz, where you spend ages trying to do something so seemingly simple which ends up being a big ordeal?

Good ole insular, nobody else matters, Japan. PLUS, CIRRUS...nothing....Japanese banks are unaware of the English language. Have to find a Citibank to make my magic card work.

 

[Sydneyfan]

Re: Re: Serenity at last!

Originally posted by knuckles
Good ole insular, nobody else matters, Japan. PLUS, CIRRUS...nothing....Japanese banks are unaware of the English language. Have to find a Citibank to make my magic card work.

It sure is a bugger. I never thought it would be so difficult, back home virtually very atm accepts virtually every card.

At least one good thing was that in each bank, there's one or two atms with an English version so you can figure out that they're not going to accept your card!

 

[Docker_Brat]

Mmmm mescalin.

 

[PrincessPark]

I was a bit worried about how much I'd be able to use my normal atm card overseas but never had a problem all throughout Europe - the only atm not to accept the Maestro/Cirrus combo was one in the casino at Monte Carlo, staff there kindly pointed out alternate atm just across the road. No dramas!