On a recent trip to England, Andrew Dodson, 35, and his wife, Erin, 32, who live in Traverse City, Michigan, had an unexpected problem: No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t spend the 700 British pounds they’d brought along.
"We traveled all around the country, including many small towns in the Lake District and the Cotswolds, and even the tiniest of pubs took cards,” says Dodson, a content marketing manager for TentCraft, a manufacturer of customized tents and accessories. "Many wouldn’t even accept cash. As we approached the end of our trip, we went to a nice dinner at this Indian restaurant where we hoped to spend off some of the cash we converted, only to be told they don’t accept cash anymore.”
Finally, their London hotel let them pay their balance with cash so they wouldn’t have to bring the pounds home and reconvert them to dollars.