tarps14
January 27th, 2010, 09:40 PM
Just thought I would pass along this little tidbit of info. There IS a way to control how much of an "approval" HAL puts on your credit/debit card. As we are all aware (and I really hesitate to state again, but must to clarify the coming statement) what HAL puts on your credit or debit card is simply a 'hold', NOT an actual charge. This info comes from personal experience, having just gotten off the Oosterdam this morning. When we completed our online check-in, we listed the cash option for our onboard account. After boarding the ship we then proceeded to put down a cash deposit. A few days into the cruise we then decided to also add our debit card to prevent having to continually add cash, BUT, (and here is the important part) you are allowed to specify a maximum amount that can be held, in our case we chose a max of $600. This prevented having literally hundreds of dollars from being tied up by these 'holds'. They will simply notify you if more is needed and you can simply authorize them to hold an additional amount.
Hopefully, this info will help some of those who are concerned with having so much available funds placed in a 'hold' and then having nothing to spend in each port along the way. We do not maintain multiple credit cards with large limits as we have found with the 'new' credit economy, the lower the limit, the better the interest rate. Therefore, we tend to pay cash for most everything. This solution worked well for us as we were still able to spend as we like in each port without having to worry about having a large amount of available funds tied up. In addition, we did not have to carry a large amount of funds in our checking acct to cover an unnecessarily large hold.
Happy cruising all!
Hopefully, this info will help some of those who are concerned with having so much available funds placed in a 'hold' and then having nothing to spend in each port along the way. We do not maintain multiple credit cards with large limits as we have found with the 'new' credit economy, the lower the limit, the better the interest rate. Therefore, we tend to pay cash for most everything. This solution worked well for us as we were still able to spend as we like in each port without having to worry about having a large amount of available funds tied up. In addition, we did not have to carry a large amount of funds in our checking acct to cover an unnecessarily large hold.
Happy cruising all!