Don't ever let anyone tell you Canada and the United States are essentially the same country (even though we currently have a government that might as well be Republican). There are significant differences, and it behooves holidaying Canadians to recognize and prepare for them. Most of them revolve around money.
Imagine visiting ten ATMs before you find one that will accept your bank card. Imagine trying to use that selfsame bank card--the one that works at every Canadian retailer on the Interac network, which is pretty much all of them--at an American store only to have the clerk regard it quizzically and inform you it's useless.
Imagine having to enter a zip code you don't have before being allowed to charge gasoline to your credit card at the pump. Try entering the default zip code every Canadian knows--"90210"--and watch your card get eaten.
The alternative to that--since your debit card won't work and you, as a Canadian, are unaccustomed to and leery of carrying around wads of cash--is to surrender your credit card to the employee inside, violating your cardholder agreement and leaving yourself wide open to skimming (identity theft, in other words).
Weird enough that you have to prepay for gas down there. I still haven't figured out how that works...are you Yankees psychic or something? How do you know how much gas your tank is going to take? Or do you just go around putting twenty bucks in at a time?
(Digression: Twenty bucks. Ha. Sorry, I should have said ten. American gas prices are insanely cheap. According to gasbuddy.com, there are places in the southern states charging $2.42 or less a gallon. Converting that to English: 63.9 cents a liter. I haven't seen that price in Canada since 1985 or so. Our current price here in the Tri-Cities is around a buck a liter--$3.78 and five tenths per gallon--and we're just about the cheapest place in Canada to get gas.)
There are workarounds for all these obstacles. Wal-Mart in the U.S. will take our debit card, and we can get cash back if we need it, for instance. But most of the bank machines where we're going are out of order as far as we're concerned. It's a frustrating problem to have...like you're living in 1970 or something.
2 comments:
The 'pay before you pump' started back when people woudl pump and dash without paying. Now, you go in, pay your $20 or $32 or whatever and the pump stops right at that point.
Don't you have just a regular Visa or Mastercard credit card?
We've got cameras up here to deter would-be gas thieves. The newest generation shows your plate with crystal clarity.
Yes, we've got both...and I hate them. I got into credit trouble when I was young and idiotic and ever since then I've loathed the idea of spending money I don't actually have.
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