Money Matters

Six of us toured ROMANIA for 10 days in May ’05 with Cristian Florea of Crif Tours (phone 40 722 606 610, e-mail romtours@digicom.ro or visit www. discoverromania.ro).

(Second of two parts, jump to part 1)

by Mary Beltran, Assistant Editor, ITN

Paying for purchases overseas has gotten complicated.

(First of two parts, jump to part 2)

I traveled to Papua New Guinea (PNG), Aug. 12-29, ’04, using the services of a locally based company called Budget Tours. I paid them to make all my tour arrangements, including transportation within PNG, accommodations, guide services, etc.

Ecuador is currently being flooded with near-perfect counterfeit bills, mostly arriving from Colombia. As a result, Ecuador’s commerce and banking sector is no longer accepting any U.S. 100-dollar bills. Even the banks will not exchange these bills, at present.

This might not seem odd at first glance, but the legal currency of Ecuador is, in fact, the U.S. dollar (adopted in late 2000).

I learned of a currency exchange scam during a visit to the Czech Republic in October ’04.

A reader mailed ITN a copy of a letter sent to Capital One Services on Nov. 18, ’04, as follows.

Betty Patterson’s letter titled “Coping With the Red Tape of an Overseas Death” (Feb. ’05, pg. 16) was very helpful as well as disturbing. The part about cancellation of the business AmEx card prompted me to call American Express for clarification about what does happen in the case where a couple has personal cards and (as is usually the case) one of them is the prime account holder and the other has his or her own card with an individual number.

From Brugge, BELGIUM, Jan. 16, ’05. . .