The ATM swallowed my bank card!

Walking in another part of the town

During our stay at the 2nd (and last) AirBnB we stayed within 30 mins walking distance mostly as we mostly tried to park the van during working hours to avoid not having a parking spot for our huge rental van. Therefore, whenever the evening fell, we went out for walks along the boulevard enjoying the sea breeze without being in the bloody hot sun while walking. We knew there was much more to discover in this area but it took a swallowed bank card at the ATM to decide and have a look a bit further from our temporary apartment.

What happened?

Well, first you should know that I never (in my life!) had a bank card swallowed by the ATM, ever! I mean, I heard stories about people having their card swallowed on holiday or just at their local ATM, of course, but personally, I never had this issue myself. Not in my country of residence or on holiday, thankfully! That is until a few weeks ago. The timing of this event was impeccable and reason to have a slightly stressed hour at least. Until I realized, I could fix this, this was just an inconvenience. I went to the ATM with my daughter (remember that windy morning where I shared the shadow picture?) with the primary goal to get a few hundred euros from the ATM as we needed to sign the rental agreement the next day and the agency fees needed to be cash. I don't like to do these things last-minute as I feel that it's stupid, things can go wrong, delays can be there, or like in this case, bank cards could be swallowed!

And so it did!

I tried to make a withdrawal of a too high amount, as this stupid lady here forgot to take the money meant for this ATM withdrawal out of the vault in the banking app. So my app was like hell no, you ain't got enough cash milady! I didn't even fully realize this until a few hours later though, lol. I just thought oh, of course, they have this max of 250 euros each day to take from the ATM, so I have to set it to 250 euros and take the rest tomorrow. Problem solved? Not really, I tried again and my card was swallowed without me even being able to fill in my code or an amount yet, it got stuck. This beautiful metal card I have was not something the ATM was used to so it seemed. I heard how it sort of locked up the ATM and that was it, the ATM was out of order, FML!

The bank was closed

Thankfully for me, this happened at an office location and even though it was closed now (it was 5 PM when this happened) at least I knew I could get there the next morning. If this would have happened the next day, I'd have had a huge problem because that was departure day to go to our new home and not even close to the place we stayed at. On top of that, we only had a few days left with the van so picking it up the next week was not optional. I would have just canceled the card and ordered a new one lol. I tried calling their bank, but no matter how hard I tried, it was not understandable to a point that I managed to get an agent on the phone, so instead, I just froze my card and hoped for the best.

Getting to another part of town

As I didn't trust any of these "solo" ATM's now, I wanted to make sure to go to a place where there was an office attached to the machine in case things went south again. Thankfully, I once signed up for Revolut free account and later to the metal plan, therefore I had two cards. The metal one was swallowed but I could now try using the regular card. Which worked fine btw, we had a nice walk in another part of the town, it was much more touristic so nice for a few hours tops, lol. I grabbed money from the ATM and we used my boyfriend's account for the remaining withdrawal so that we were all set the next day. We had a tapa nearby our parking spot and the next morning I went to the bank, and guess what? I was out there within 5 minutes. I was actually a bit nervous as this experience was new to me, and now I was in another country with a foreign bank card, the nerves were in vain, it was a very smooth process.

Lesson learned, try to avoid using the metal card for money withdrawals (if you can) to avoid some headaches afterward.

For the best experience view this post on Liketu