Sri Lanka travel report, and 'Trip Report' beta test review/bug?

Hi,

I just got back from Sri Lanka, where Monzo was my main card. I also signed up for the Trip Report beta so I have some feedback on that too.

I didn’t have too many problems with Monzo at all - not many places we went took card, but where they did I had no problem. I used the card in shops, restaurants and hotels with no problem at all. Our biggest problem was that sometimes ATMs wouldn’t take foreign cards at all - neither my Monzo nor my HSBC/Visa card, nor my boyfriend’s bank card. If you’re in Sri Lanka, keep an eye out for ATMs from Sampath Bank, Bank of Ceylon or Hatton National Bank as all of those were fine.

I didn’t have any problems topping up the Monzo card when I was on wifi, it went through straight away.

It was really really helpful to be able to keep an eye on the exchange rate through Monzo while we were abroad as it fluctuated a bit - so Monzo was so great as I got to take advantage of the better exchange rates with no fees!

The main thing that was a bit weird/confusing was that I bought something in a shop, and the transaction didn’t go through. The shop assistant tried to run the card three times, and it declined every time - on two different card machines. Then on the fourth time, the transaction went through. I used the shop’s wifi to check what had happened on Monzo - and I saw that actually, one of the transactions went through but was then immediately refunded, then the fourth transaction went through.

In terms of the trip report, this is actually a bit annoying, as there are two purchases counted in my expenditure - not the refunded amount, and I can’t see a way of removing it - so that means the trip report ‘total spend’ is kind of pointless as it’s not my total spend at all - it has an extra chunk that I didn’t spend as the transaction got refunded immediately. So for me, it’s not been as helpful as I’d hoped - but obviously it’s still in beta! It would be good to have a way of removing that if possible?

As for trip report feedback otherwise - it would have been good to categorise the transactions within the holiday, so I could see a breakdown of how I spent my money on holiday, and perhaps to see a breakdown of how much I spent in each city, but these are just suggestions for future consideration :slight_smile:

Thanks all :slight_smile:

(Edit: Also just noticed that the tag for this still says ‘Travelling with Mon do’ ;))

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Sri Lanka - Mondo in Sri Lanka