France 2009 Help please

[Bikerchic1467]

Hi Guys New to BCF. Have enjoyed reading a lot of the topics. My husband and I are taking the Bikes to France next Year the only concern I have is I have just got a transalp XL700V 2008 model anyone got an idea of the best route to take for gas station open on a Sunday. as a lot of the small towns don't have any?? [/img]

[Itchy]

All of the supermarket ones are open on a Sunday , all self serve though, and you have to watch out for the credit card trap ie each time you use it it locks away £100 and refunds you back a couple weeks later.

Plenty of petrol stations everywhere , as almost all routes say the N85 have a town with a petrol station in it ,

N85 -> Grenoble (don't go in!) -> gap -> Sisteron -> valerance -> castellane (has a tiny expensive one) -> grasse -> Nice.

Burn out of the North via the autoroute costs you tolls but worth it..

Best routes I found were between Dijon and Aix le bains, the N85 and the N202.
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[Phoenix]

Never had a problem getting fuel on Sunday, as said nearly all machines are self serve out of hours and both my debit and credit card worked fine in them all. I didn't once encounter anything saying there was a £100 holding charge on your card either, where did you get that from?

Can't see how that'd work either as after a few fill ups over a week or so you could run out of money or hit your credit limit. And surely you don't think every french person who fills their bike/car up has to prepare to lose £100 from their account for 2weeks?

[dodger]

There is definitely a hold on foreign cards. When you put your card in the machine it tells you the maximum transaction, normally 100 or 150 euros. the full amount is then put 'on hold' in your account until the transaction is complete and the petrol station has their money. It happened to me on the final days of my Euro tour and I had to get my mum to put money into my account. From my experience, cash machines also have the same 'hold'.

The same thing happens over here with pay at the pumps, but normally the transaction is instant so the hold doesn't affect people. Although Asda's ones occasionally cause problems.

As for the OP there are petrol stations everywhere in France! One of the reasons I bought a sat-nav was for fear of running out of petrol but even on a Duke 1098 you would struggle not to find a petrol station in time...
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My Bikes: Piaggio NRG| Aprilia RS 125| Suzuki GSX-R 600|Yamaha Fazer Ducati 848
Europe 2008

[Phoenix]

Well I didn't suffer any problems as a result of it, and if it's only held until the money is cleared then that should only be an absolute maximum of 3days not 2weeks! However I'd still rather see an official article about it, as a cashpoint usually limits £250 withdrawals, so to withdraw £20 it's going to hold £250?

[dodger]

Don't forget foreign banks take longer than UK based transactions [whilst it may not be exactly two weeks its a significant amount of time], and it did affect me on the last few days of my trip. I had around £800 left in my account and after a few trips to a petrol station and two 100 euro cash withdrawals I was no longer able to take money from my account until extra money was put into it.
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My Bikes: Piaggio NRG| Aprilia RS 125| Suzuki GSX-R 600|Yamaha Fazer Ducati 848
Europe 2008

[spnorm]

I had no problems whatsoever in France last year, whether using Maestro or Visa.

Initially I used my GPS to find Carrefour or Le Clerc supermarket filling stations, but it turned out even rural automated petrol stations would accept UK cards.

[Bikerchic1467]

Thanks folks for the info. It helps when route planning.

[Vin]

On the subject of credit and debit cards. My Barclaycard didn't work in Belgium and France when I went away for a week in May. When I got back I found a letter triumphantly telling me they had averted an attempted fraud on my card. When I phoned up and explained it was me they said I should have told then I was going away. Evidently credit and debit card transactions abroad are very suspicious. Luckily my debit card worked or I would have been sleeping in bus shelters and pushing my bike home. Also I bank with Lloyds and they recently warned I should tell them if I intend to use my debit cards abroad. So much for the convenience of credit and debit cards the fuckers. Cash isn't really the answer because loads of European petrol stations are automatic card only.

[Phoenix]

Well that's a fairly well known fact, it even says in your bank's literauture, the basic stuff with big pictures rather than the small print T&Cs they send out to ring them before using cards abroad. However Nationwide specifically say don't ring them as they will figure out for themselves if it's suspicious. I had several cards just incase so was never going to be shafted if one got cancelled.

Incase it's not been said, use Nationwide or Post Office credit/debit cards only if you can as they charge no commission on foreign currency purchases and give you the current VISA exchange rate making it better than exchanging cash before you go or any other method of converting money.

All other credit cards charge you unless you're on some of the paid for gold/platinum type schemes, and even then I'm not absolutely sure they're free of charge, read articles on www.moneysavingexpert.com for full info.

[EuropeanNC30R...]

[nautilus]

It's worth taking a number of cards in case one doesn't ork when you want it. This year we got ourselves some prepaid credit cards and just kept our bank cards for emergencies. It helped me with budgetting, has all the advantages of a credit card, a good exchange rate, no charges except a small one in foreign ATMS but without commission. We used www.fairfxcard.com but there are a number of different ones available, details on https://www.moneysupermarket.com/prepaidcards/CardsResults.asp?feature=Prepaid&Type=CreditCard
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[RidersRest]

[Mr.Everready]

^^^^^^

Whats that on your avatar, I can hardly see it.
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[k0no]