My card was taken by an ATM near my hotel in US Virgin Islands. Has this happened to anyone else? Solution?
Card-swallowing issues are more common than you'd think, especially with aging machines or bad weather. As a resident, I’ve helped at least two visiting friends through this. FirstBank Cruz Bay staff are very professional - they'll check logs and confirm if your card was retained, but won’t hand it back if it’s foreign. File a lost/stolen report with your bank right away and request a replacement shipped here via FedEx or DHL. Takes about 5-7 days.
Had my debit card eaten outside the St. Thomas airport. The ATM belonged to a third-party provider - Cardtronics or something similar. There's no local office, and I had to file a report through their website, which went nowhere. Learned the hard way: only use bank-branded ATMs, ideally during business hours. If a card gets swallowed, and it’s a major bank like FirstBank or Banco Popular, go in ASAP with your ID - they might recover it if you're lucky and it’s still in the machine.
Same story here - used an ATM in Red Hook and my Mastercard got eaten. I went into the Banco Popular branch next door the next day with my passport. They said they found the card but couldn’t return it since it was a foreign bank card - their policy is to destroy them. They let me call my bank using their landline, which helped. If this happens to you, act fast and block the card immediately.
Yep, happened to me in St. Croix. I used a random ATM outside a liquor store and it froze halfway, then swallowed my card. No contact number on the machine. Locals told me to go directly to the FirstBank branch nearby, but since it wasn’t their ATM, they couldn’t help. I had to call my bank back home, cancel the card, and wait for a replacement. Now I always carry two cards and only use machines inside banks during working hours.