Getting my wallet lifted by pickpockets was a sour start to our visit to Paris.
Fleeced in France… curses! If you missed how that happened, read it here.
But now we can talk a little about the fallout of that incident.
I was carrying a little American money. Probably $40 or so.
More and more, traveling anywhere - even in the States - the need for carrying cash is becoming less necessary. Your credit card is your ticket to just about everything, every purchase.
But you’re always going to need a little cash for gratuities. Or perhaps, pay toilets. So, there’s a need for some, just not much.
Arriving in a foreign country, we hit an ATM and use our bank card (not credit card!) to get a little local currency for those occasions.
Having realized very quickly that my wallet was pilfered, then hopping on my phone and hitting the credit card apps to report them stolen saved me the worry of bogus purchases on those cards.
But I made one strategic error.
Because the only thing I ever use my bank’s ATM card for is withdrawing cash from an ATM, and because withdrawing cash from an ATM requires a PIN number, I assumed my ATM card would be of no value to the clowns now in possession of it. Wouldn’t any purchase they attempted need a PIN?
Nope.
Son, you need to keep up with the times a little better! Yes, I knew it was a debit card, but that chip on your ATM card essentially makes it akin to a credit card.
Anyway… that errant assumption led me to delay dealing with the stolen ATM card until after I got off the train.
The thieved didn’t wait.
Before the train could pull into the station in Paris, my phone dinged. It was an automated message from my bank.
Best I can tell, AUX SPORTIFS is a restaurant, maybe a sports bar. But $3200 at a restaurant or bar in about 30 minutes?? Obviously, more to that than I understand.
Regardless, the transaction was frozen. So were 5 subsequent attempts to use the card. I had shut the bad guys down from playing with my toys.
They did get a little something. Before the really big charge that sent up red flags to my bank, they made a successful charge of about $920 at the same place. We discovered that one when I talked to my bank back home a bit later.
However, I’m insured by the bank for any fraudulent charges on my card reported within 60 days. It was refunded to my account is short order.
Final tally on my financial losses: the $40 US dollars I was carrying.
Whew!
When traveling, we always pare down our wallets (and pocketbook) to the bare necessities. But yes, there were a couple of other things stolen that would need to be dealt with eventually.
Most importantly, a driver’s license.
Even though my wife is not afraid to drive in other countries, I’m typically the driver. But the driving portion of our vacation was behind us. The rest would be trains, taxis and hired drivers.
The only other thing was insurance cards. They are printed from websites, though, so if there was a need for them before we got back home, I could certainly arrange to print them again.
Knowing from the beginning of this incident things could be taken care of pretty quickly, we never really fretted the stolen wallet.
Interestingly, the BIGGEST TAKEAWAY from all of this?
I didn’t need my wallet.
We still had 17 travel days left when it was lifted. Five days in Paris, three in Switzerland and ten more in Italy. But since the credit card stored in my phone was replaced immediately - digitally, by my credit card company - I was swimming in gravy.
Pull out my phone, tap-to-pay, and we’ll see you down the road, Chump.
I suppose we were lucky my wife, Beverly, was carrying the passports (she doesn’t trust me to keep up with mine) and certainly she has her own credit cards, so we were never dead in the water. But we proceeded with our vacation as though nothing ever happened.
Sure, there’s going to be bit of hassle to reporting things stolen and ultimately getting replacements, but in our digital world it’s just a little of your time.
Back home, a new driver’s license has been a piece o’ cake. $10 to replace a stolen Georgia license. Mine was set for renewal in 3 months, anyway, so I paid $32 for a new one that will take me through the next 8 years.
I left Paris with no intention of returning. It wasn’t getting hit on the train that made me feel that way, it was the people.
So many people. So many tourists! But hey, isn’t that exactly what I was?
A little time has softened me. Paris has so much to see.
We hooked up with some old friends, took a boat down the lovely Seine River, toured the city’s oldest university, rode a merry-go-round, visited a beautiful cathedral…
And ate at a 5-story restaurant.
That restaurant was a hoot! It’s pink, and I guess being one block away from all of the shops selling sexy lingerie and toys, maybe people think it’s something else…
We missed visiting the Louvre. The word we got was, if you don’t have at least half a day, don’t even try. The place is massive! Stunningly so, even from the outside.
The only day was had that much time was a Tuesday. Care to guess which day the Louvre is closed?
Mona Lisa surely needs to see me. So does the rest of France. So yeah, I’ll go back.
With my wallet in my front pocket.