Photo: Beau Giles via Creative Commons
Young Melburnians have been caught short on cash – thanks to a glitch of the Travel Money card that kept travelers stranded overseas.
This week students and young professionals have been flooding the CommBank’s customer service and social media with complaints about being unable to access their travel fund or having transactions declined on EFTPOS machines.
Since 2012, major banks in Australia are taking advantage of the increasingly expanding tourism industry by issuing travel cards, including cards from CommBank, NAB, Qantas Cash Card and the Bendigo Cash Passport.
People traveling overseas can load foreign currency with a locked-in exchange rate and withdraw cash in any ATM overseas without occurring an extra money converting fee.
While traveling across New Zealand, Naomi Leow – a retail worker from Carlton – was given an error message when she was trying to log onto CommBank’s Netbank page to check her fund balance.
“It was so worrying when you do not know how much money you have left to budget the rest of your trip.
“I was told by the bank staff the Travel Money card is the most reliable way to access money overseas, but I’ve got nothing but frustration with this card.
“When I called the hotline for support, they advised me to wait and said CommBank is fixing the problem,” Ms Leow said.
A customer service consultant at CommBank’s Bourke Street branch, who refused to be identified, said the bank has been receiving lots of calls and Facebook posts regarding this issue since last Sunday.
“We do sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused for our customers and thank you for their patience with us,” he said.
User Angela Embleton wrote on the bank’s Facebook page: “I reported an issue with my Travel Money card over 24 hours ago and still cannot get access to my money! When will this issue be resolved?”
Others used Twitter to vent their anger. Paul Barowski wrote: ” As I type this note, my daughter has no access to money on her travel card in Portugal. What can be done to resolve this?”
Hey @commbank, if I have to use another card will you reimburse all the fees???? This travel card situation is ridiculous.
— Natalie Nguyen (@imnatalienguyen) August 2, 2015
@CommBank whats wrong with traveling card it does not work .. good that i have some spare cash otherwise i will sleep in the street. — Turky Alrasheed (@TurkiAlrasheed) August 2, 2015
Hey @CommBank my international currencies are down via NetBank – help! — Tania Debono (@the_cakeface) August 2, 2015
However, Commonwealth Bank is still unable to offer an explanation for the outage.
Andrew Zhu, a Brunswick-based IT professional who embarked on his first visit to USA last week, is another angry customer.
“My transactions were declined over and over again, so I had to pay for food and transport by cash and I am very out of pocket now.
“I have been saving up for this trip as a 25th birthday present for myself and was very much looking forward to it. I don’t want to be stuck (cashless) in New York City where there are endless things to do,” Mr Zhu said.
With his dwindling amount of cash, he said, “I will never use this thing again.”
It’s the second time CommBank’s systems have suffered a major malfunction this year, its Eftpos terminals went offline for several hours in June, causing chaos for shoppers and businesses.
