BrimhamRocks, do not go into the bank when it is closed. There are rules that apply under those circumstances which may have unintended consequences.

jsmith, I guess I'm still confused. Is that a tongue in cheek way of saying don't break into a bank? If so, then I think that's a rather good point!!

There was a very disurbing case in the UK recently, when a person obtained foreign currency from a Post Office, and when they attempted to use it in their holiday destination, they were arrested for passing forged notes. Afraid I don't recall the exact details or the final outcome.

Further to my previuous post, here is the link to the relevant news item....http://business.scotsman.com/media.cfm?id=149262004

In different countries over the past few years we had difficulty exchanging large denomination, new bills. In one instance, our passports were taken in to the manager "for approval" and the first pages copied. They did exchange $200 but said it was a policy exception. This was a large office that we had been directed to by a smaller office. We have since stopped carrying big bills.

After reading these posts, I suppose the best thing to do in the event of a problematic ATM is follow jsmith's advice. Go into the bank (when it is open), present a debit card and get cash and forget about exchanging dollars. And have a couple of credit card backups.

P.S. we are strictly ATM users now, here and abroad.

platzman, apologies to Lerner and Loewe but "I think you've got it". You will need a passport as ID. A driver's license works in the US.

If you feel better about taking some cash $ why don't you simply take some 20s instead of the couple of hundreds???????

If the pens do find some counterfeits, then they aren't useless even if they don't find all counterfeits.