If you lost your debit card...

[centrinoduo]

sorry for posting many threads at once.. but my situation is pretty sad.

i have been using checking debit card I brought from US. i was pulling money out from it whenever i needed money. it was working fine and my life was good.. until...

i lost my debit card.

i cancelled the card of course.. but now have no access to cash = starving.

how would you recommend i work this out? i am thinking of few option here.. (remember i am trying to have access to my fund asap)

1. have bank at US send the card to my home in US and have my family member FED ex the new debit card here at grenada (would it be safe?)
2. have family member transfer the money from US to my RBTT bank (how to do wire question in other thread)
3. try to use internet banking (one available with my chase bank account) and try to transfer to RBTT that way. now when i tried, chase said they will make two small deposits to my RBTT bank account to verify the account's validity before allowing internet bank transfer and that alone will take 3 business days. and then good lord how will i know how much the deposits have been made or if that's even possible with RBTT bank...

any ideas?

thanks - desperate & starving Centrinoduo

[Crispy]

I would have another card sent to a family member & then have them fed-ex it to you. I am not familiar with transferring to RBTT. Just borrow some money from a friend and pay them back when you get your new card.

[rokshana]

actually transferring funds isn't that difficult and is pretty quick- within a 1-2 business days- it however can be expensive if you don't have an elite account with your US bank- check with them.

as for funds ASAP?- have family send you something to tide you over via Western Union- there is an office over near the food fair- not expensive and is pretty quick - within a few hours.

also i think you can go talk to the DOS office- they may have some sort of emergency loan thing - 500 EC or something like that.

i would have the bank send your new card to your family and then have them fed ex it to you- probably the safest of the options- make sure it is unactivated and then you can activate yourself- if you don't get it within a couple f days of your family fed exing it- you probably need to check with the bank to see if it was activated and let them know you haven't received it if it was.

Good luck!

[RussianJoo]

if you have a credit card you can go to any bank and they'll do a credit card advance, meaning they'll charge your credit card and give you cash. if you don't have a credit card you can use western union to have money sent to you. But it's saturday, everything is going to be closed till monday so good luck. good thing you can go two days without eating, just drink plenty of water.

[AngryBaby]

Course the problem with the cash advance from a credit card is you're getting nailed with astronomical rates. This is no big deal if you previously had a zero balance and can pay off the advance very soon, however if not those rates can be a killer.

Anyway, I just had the ATM at RBTT in Grand Anse eat my card because I left it in there too long. I had very little cash and this is how we handled it:

1. Card canceled and called my folks.
2. Folks had 2k of my loan taken out of my account and deposited into my wife's account (she's with me)
3. Folks overnighted via DHL the forms to "apply" for a new ATM card (got to the school in about 4 days).
4. Will send me the ATM card upon receipt.

All in all will probably take about , or just under, 3 weeks. Now if you don't have a sig other here then just substitute Western Union for step 2 as was previously mentioned.

I will say, however, that if you have an account on the island here then I would just have some of the money wired to that account to tie you over till you get the ATM card. I wired $1kusd from my account in the states to a realtor down here and it cost me about $35, course that will depend upon your bank but shouldn't be too far off from that number.

Hope that helps, good luck.

[RussianJoo]

if the RBTT ATM ate your card why didn't you just go to a teller and ask them to take the card out of the atm? i don't think there was a need to cancel your card or do anything else.

[aspiring in alaska]

I too lost my debit card, wasn't used to the ATM machine not beeping at me after i made the transation. I cancelled the card, had them send a new one to my wife and she fedex'd it. Since it cost so much to fedex even an envelope, she upgraded to a nice sized box, and I got a nice care package :-smiley7.

Only took 3 days to get it, borrowed money in the meantime, and now i'm good to go!

[AngryBaby]

if the RBTT ATM ate your card why didn't you just go to a teller and ask them to take the card out of the atm? i don't think there was a need to cancel your card or do anything else.
Yeah I didn't realize it ate my card until after I canceled it. I realized I didn't have it on my way back from the ATM, walked quickly back expecting to find it since I was only about 30 yds away. I didn't find it, started flipping out inside my head and called my bank to cancel the card. It wasn't until I had the card canceled that I started to really get a handle on what had happened and realized it was probably the ATM (initially I thought I took the card out of the machine and left it on that little "shelf" they have at about waist level).


Anyway I wasn't sure it was taken by the ATM until the bank opened on Monday (lost is Sat. afternoon) and had I realized all this before I canceled the card I wouldn't have wanted to take the chance that someone did in fact walk off with it and could have used it for 2 days until I found out for sure.

I'm not sure if any of that makes sense...I've been looking at biochem for too long.