Every time I've gone abroad, my debit card has failed to work, and I've had to spend 45 minutes on the phone to my bank to get them to make it work again. It do

Every time I've gone abroad, my debit card has failed to work, and I've had to spend 45 minutes on the phone to my bank to get them to make it work again. It doesn't matter if I go into the branch to tell them I'm going abroad, or whether I set it up on their website, or whether I just don't tell them at all. However vague or precise I am with the dates or the destination, when I arrive, my debit card doesn't work. The bank are always apologetic when I return. But so what? I don't want to spend 45 minutes on the phone to somebody in the airport in a foreign country. It's time-consuming, and ridiculously expensive. So I go to the bureau de change. I've found bureaux de change to give better exchange rates anyway - mostly. Shopping around can be worthwhile, as the favourability of the exchange rate seems to be inversely proportional to the convenience and salubriousness of the place.