Avoid Thomas Cook Mastercard OneCurrency card!. Review on Thomas Cook India

We used the Thomas Cook One Currency card recently on a holiday and had a terrible experience. Card stopped working one fine day and left us almost stranded on an island near Bali, Indonesia. Later we found that a large transaction which showed as Declined on merchant’s POS system was debited from our balance as an Approved transaction leaving the card with virtually no balance. None of the local i.e. overseas helplines work. We finally had to call up the branch in Bangalore, India which had issued the card.

Issue #1: You cannot top up the card online, you need to physically present documents at the Thomas Cook home branch to add USD to your card. Which is obviously impossible when you are traveling.

Issue #2: Thomas Cook has no control over failed transactions and will not do anything to help in such an event. Even 10 days after returning to India, an amount of 500+ USD was due to the Bali hotel where we stayed and Thomas Cook refused to help us transfer the money.

Issue #3: Mastercard charges 2.5% from all merchants which of course gets passed on to the customer. So be ready to pay 2.5% extra on every transaction where you use this card in lieu of cash.