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#241
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Neil Williams wrote:
In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you intend on travelling abroad. Since when? I never do. -- Jeremy Double {real address, include nospam} Rail and transport photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmdoubl...7603834894248/ |
#242
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Jeremy Double wrote:
Neil Williams wrote: In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you intend on travelling abroad. Since when? I never do. Me neither. I've never had a transaction refused abroad, whereas occasionally I _have_ had it happen in the UK, especially _after_ chip and pin, annoyingly. At least as far as the RBS seems concerned, I ought to notify them when I intend spending my money in half a dozen shops within an hour! ![]() -- (*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate -www.davidhorne.net (email address on website) "If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it." -Richard Dawkins |
#244
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In article ,
Jeremy Double wrote: Neil Williams wrote: In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you intend on travelling abroad. Since when? I never do. I bought air tickets to Spain a few years ago. A few days later I got an automated call claiming to be from my credit card company and offering a number to call back on. I didn't, of course - I called the usual number and asked if the call was legit. It was and the security people called back and asked if I'd just bought tickets with Iberia. I said yes, I was going to Spain. They said it was a good job I'd told them because otherwise they'd have stopped the card if I'd tried to use it in Spain. Oddly I'm still with the same credit card company, but I have warned them about going abroad since then. Sam |
#245
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John B wrote:
On 24 Jun, 20:05, (Neil Williams) wrote: In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you intend on travelling abroad. It is? I've never done or heard of this, and nor have any of the other people I've just asked about it... The older way of doing things was to simply deny all out-of-country transactions unless the customer had specifically requested to be able to use their card in a particular foreign country. However, with the amount of international travel these days -- and the amount of flak they got for denying people's charges when they went on vacation -- that has generally fallen out of practice. Today, many of the better banks have "intelligent" systems that try to spot detect fraud based on usage patterns. If you rarely traveled out of your city/country or made large purchases, they might flag such transactions at the time of sale and either deny them, require the merchant call them, or even now call the customer's cell phone to verify. If you _knew_ you were about to change your pattern, you would call up and let them know to turn off the flags for a particular period. S |
#246
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Charles Ellson wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:34:08 -0500, Stephen Sprunk wrote: The issue at hand, though, is that neither of those things help the blind figure out what they're holding; you need different sizes, braille, or something similar that can be distinguished solely by touch, and as of today US notes have nothing helpful in that area -- they all feel exactly the same. I recall some notes I had a while back when traveling (FRF? NLG? AUD? NZD?) had clear sections that one could feel and, if given a few seconds, determine the shape and thus what denomination the note was. That's an interesting possibility as an alternative to different sizes or braille. However, I don't know if that would be compatible with the US's use of cloth notes... BoE notes have holograms integrated into the (made from rag IIRC) paper so mixing materials doesn't seem to be a problem. Interesting. I assume the holograms are attached on top of the rag, though, instead of integrated into a hole in the material? With Braille I suspect the difficulty lies with the inconstant thickness resulting or the eventual flattening of the "dots". That's one problem; another is that the notes get rather abused in circulation, being crumpled up, put through washing machines, etc. and braille relies on having a flat medium, not a wrinkly/soft one. Punching holes in the notes is probably not an option Actually, that was my first thought, but obviously the largest notes would have to have the fewest and/or smallest holes, and you'd have to study how to do it in a way that wouldn't increase tearing (a problem for our cloth notes already). so relying on textural differences seems to be the remaining option if the size and/or colour can't be changed. Color can easily be changed for notes above USD1, but that doesn't help the blind. There are millions of vending machines that take USD1 bills, though, so any changes to those are impractical. The transition to coins was supposed to solve that, but hasn't happened yet. Possibly a variation on the BoE holograms could provide textural "dots" but how many different denominations of dollar note would need to be identified ? We currently have USD 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 notes in circulation. There also used to be USD 1000 notes in circulation, but they were withdrawn a few decades ago; I expect USD 200 and 500 notes to eventually be circulated, as well as a return of the USD 1000 note, in time due to inflation, but not for several decades. S |
#247
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"Matthew Geier" wrote in message
u... When the Australian Mint patent expires probably. I've heard a story that the Eurozone investigated using Australian style plastic notes, but the Australian Mint holds the process very close and wouldn't release the process for use in Europe. If the Eurozone wanted plastic notes, they would have to be printed in Australia. So the only countries that currently have plastic notes all get the Australian mint to print them for them, so take up of these types of notes has been limited to smaller Pacific rim counties that don't have their own currency printing facilities or don't mind 'out sourcing' it to Australia. What about Romania, however? They have a 1,000-lei note. |
#248
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"Phil Wieland" wrote in message
... So the only countries that currently have plastic notes all get the Australian mint to print them for them, so take up of these types of notes has been limited to smaller Pacific rim counties that don't have their own currency printing facilities or don't mind 'out sourcing' it to Australia. Doesn't the Isle of Man have plastic notes? Are theirs Australian as well? Not to my knowledge and not in my experience as I was there not too long ago. |
#249
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"John B" wrote in message
... On 24 Jun, 20:05, (Neil Williams) wrote: In the UK it is also conventional that you notify your bank if you intend on travelling abroad. It is? I've never done or heard of this, and nor have any of the other people I've just asked about it... -- Neither have I as it is none of their business. One time I told them that I planned to be abroad and not to go into a panic. when they see withdrawals from a non-UK bank on my card. They said that I would need to supply them with an itinerary, to which I most firmly told them: NO! |
#250
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![]() "Hugh Brodie" wrote in message ... wrote in message ... "Hugh Brodie" wrote in message ... Speaking of hyper-inflation, it's fun looking at the website of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe http://www.rbz.co.zw to see the daily exchange rate of the $Z vs the $US. Yesterday, it was 5,817,000,000; today it's 6,718,000,000. They have just issued $Z 50,000,000,000 notes ("bearer cheques"). And it will cost you $Z 1,800,000,000 to mail a postcard to the US. http://www.zimpost.co.zw/postalrates.html It's a shame that there are no images of currently circulating Zimbabwean notes or coins. A few notes here - buying a beer in Hara http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgur...%3Den%26sa%3DG On the other hand - the Zimbabwe stock market has been one of the best performing in the world. The industrial index which was at 1,000 a couple of years ago, is now 5,160,207,611,002.24 . http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=478&cat=8 More big numbers: your average Zimbabwe stock portfolio has tripled since my last posting - the industrial index is now at 16,421,906,235,086.20 (but still under $Z 10 billion to the US$) . Good housing is in the $Z 3-5 quadrillion range. Market capitalization of a major local company (Delta) is $Z 26.2 quintillion. http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=653&cat=8 hb. |
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