It might be something with your own internal bank at home. The ATM's I used last week were totally fine and I usually withdraw thousands of pesos per day. None of my banks charge for ATM transactions and I can take out up to 3,000 pesos at a time with my ATM card.

I think it probably was your Bank of America that had the charge. Definitely ANY traveler these days if their bank refuses to waive transaction fees while you travel, get another bank. There other banks pay very high interest rates, allow NO ATM fees no matter where you travel to and high limits of withdrawing. The only place to date where it wouldn't work is Cuba!

We had exactly the same problem at the end of our trip in July - for two weeks we were able to withdraw up to 790 pesos or something like that and then all of a sudden we got limited to 320 pesos. We checked with some locals but they had no idea why this was the case so I have no idea why this happened but rest assured - you're not the only one this has happened to.

I make sure I bank with someone that doesn't impose ridiculous withdrawal charges for when you're abroad - maybe you could shop around and find another bank before going abroad again.

Much was written when this ATM "madness" started happening a few months back, in April. But at that time the limit was $100 pesos which is even worse. I think that somewhere along the line - the 100 pesos at least went to a 100 USD equivalent. which is about 300 pesos.

tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g312741-i979-k1029…

It boiled down to the type of card you had - the "Plus" cards were the ones affected. Cirrus (and maybe others seemed to be OK) And also the kind of ATM you used - Banelco had the limits, but LINK had much higher limits.

I did however see in another newsgroup, that sometimes this summer, LINK also decreased their limits.

It all does not have to do with your home bank per se or their limits. Its seems to be a limit Argentina has imposed on cards from certain systems.

Even before this, I found that I was only able to take out 500 pesos on my Plus Card from Banelco machines but over 1000 from LINK.

PDXtraveller just posted in another thread, asking the current status of the limits.

Since I haven't been to Argentina before all this started - I don't know the current status. However, I am writing to fill in some of the background.

I have a question for Canadians reading this. Does anyone know if there are any banks that we can open accounts in that don't have foreign ATM fees? Or at least one with fees lower that $5.00.

raquel

I'm Canadian, and I'm also affected by this. I was unable to find a bank that did not charge this fee, and I'm also limited to 300 pesos. I prefer to withdraw 290 so I can get a few smaller bills. For now, I'm just putting up with it. I'll be moving along to other countries in South America, so I'm hoping this problem is only in Argentina.

Thanks for the information. I did not have this problem in Brazil. I think next year I will simply open an HSBC account with enough to cover my vacation spending.