The one tip I’ve read RE: the BinaxNow test that’s important is that be sure you have your profiles on emed.com set up before you leave for overseas—the website may not let you set up a profile from another country, I have read on message boards.
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Good point. I set mine up before ordering, and reminded my travel companion to do so as well.
Chase no longer wants travel notifications on their cards (there is no way to do it online, and says they don’t want it). My daughter did notify her debit card at the credit union and they put all her countries into the computer. So far she’s taken 2 ATM withdrawals and a Eurail charge without incident.
Just tagging @shawbridge because that’s who really wanted this answer.
If you charge your flights to your credit card, you don’t need to inform the issuer because they get the passenger names and travel destinations directly from the airlines/merchants, so they know where you will be on those dates.
Thanks @MADad. Just ordered. I have run around trying to get tests so this makes a lot of sense. I don’t know if it will save us much if we need to quarantine. For the first trip, we will be in Banff and would need a hotel but would probably go to Calgary or Canmore anyway. If we needed to quarantine, we might be able to stay at a friend’s house who will be out of the country. For our second trip, we’ll be coming directly out of the mountains and driving to the airport hotel the night before as we have a 6:45 AM flight the next morning. We have a bunch of BinaxNow tests.
None of my cards have foreign transaction fees by choice. Way too much international traveling to deal with that. So, all but one automatically assume that I’m traveling abroad.
France (just got back)–only thing we needed was our vaccination cards for entry–needed to be up to date (last dose or booster up to 270 days ago). No other forms.
I brought the covid tests to be done in hotel room for return trip but ended up in a pharmacy by the train station for 20 euros. So much easier in the long run. No appointment necessary. Airport also set up for covid testing.
Autoslash is great for rental cars.
No need to tell CC company about trip (maybe because flights were charged). In fact every time we charged something we got instant message on phone as to amount and where. All charging was table side.
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All you Autoslash fans: who did you ultimately book through? I have reservations for Hertz in France but set up Autoslash tracking. I’m getting some lower prices but they’re through Priceline and other non rental car companies. I’ve heard you shouldn’t book through them. How did your Autoslash bookings work?
Autoslash ONLY keeps track of prices so you can reserve and cancel along the line.
If you book a price through Priceline or other non rental car companies the game is over and you’ll be locked in to that price since you can’t easily cancel it. Autoslash has warnings on this.
You have to keep up with your reservations and cancellations also. If you reserve with Hertz (as an example) and get a notice of a cheaper rate with Avis the next day you must cancel the Hertz reservation and then make the Avis reservation. This is on you.
The Priceline and other offers do show up but those companies do not have the cancellation policies of the major rental companies.
How did you get away with not doing the dreaded EU plf form for France? Did you fly into France from another country in Europe or drive/train from somewhere? Otherwise, I believe it’s still required.
We are heading there in <two weeks and this is the first I’ve heard about this. I checked with AmX Travel and Virgin about requirements and neither mentioned it.
Check out the Sherpa travel website. Put in your origination/destination, France is still requiring the mandatory passenger locator form, but not if traveling there by land or water. Look under “other documents”.
Delta wouldn’t even let us check in until we filled that out. We got to the airport 3 1/2 hours prior and almost missed our flight. It was awful, and would have been so easy if I’d filled it out at home earlier. I had no idea this form existed, and I’m a pretty savvy traveler. Apparently it’s a Covid holdover, with most countries not requiring it anymore.
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Holy guac, bus. That beats my story of extracting my husband out of London when his Covid test results did not come on time. He made his flight with some room to spare, but it required me to do a lot of searching for an alternative arrangement less than 12 hours before his 9 am flight!
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That doesn’t sound like any fun, either!
In our case, the Delta FlyReady didn’t let us get any info about our flight, because Slovenia wasn’t supported. The Delta agent we called said we shouldn’t have any problem checking in at the airport. We thought we’d be sitting in the club for two hours before the flight, drinking coffee.
My husband was so stressed out, he started thinking about just cancelling our entire trip and going home.Haven’t been this stressed for a long time. We usually check in online and zip through security in the Clear line. So much unnecessary stress, if only we had heard a single word about this form. I guess we just didn’t look hard enough, and Delta enforced the fact that it had to completed online, and we needed an email confirmation. What if there was no internet access at the airport, or someone didn’t have a phone? Crazy!
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If you booked refundable, go to AutoSlash.com & Track a Rental (top of page). It may take several days or more (I’ve had price drops as long as 27 days from the day I started having them track) - they will email you when the category of car you’re renting drops. You can choose to go to that new rate (renting from Priceline or directly with various agencies) or not. The past 5 trips I’ve saved well over 50% from my original reservation - all the way to 2 days before a trip. It’s worth it.
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D20 still stuck in Israel. At-home test on day 4 was still positive so she goes to automatic 7 day quarantine and Birthright has rebooked her on a flight out on day 9. She will have to present the doctor’s note with info about her date of initial positive test in lieu of a negative test to be allowed on the plane. 
that this is truly the case and there’s no last minute drama at the airport.
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I do see the requirement of the form now but never did it. Maybe my husband did (don’t know if it was one per family). If he did he never mentioned it to me. The requirements change almost daily so it’s really hard to keep up with them. Some requirements (like masking etc) vary within the country too.
On the plus side Italy just dropped all covid entry requirements.
Edit: Husband says he didn’t fill one out.
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Headed to Canada in 2 weeks:
–to be let into Canada one must fill out the ArriveCAN forms on its app. You upload your passport, COVID card, and answer health questions, I believe. Good thing is that only one of you has to complete it for your entire traveling party.
–to be re-admitted into the US it looks like there is an attestation form, where one checks off whether you’ve had a negative COVID test, or have a doctor’s note stating you’ve had COVID and recovered, or are exempted. Tour company says they will provide forms for us, OR we can print them from home and bring them with us–we will do just that.
(Gee, if only the US was technologically advanced like Canada so we could do this via app…)
We’ll see if things change in the next 2 weeks.
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Maybe it’s a Delta thing?
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Maybe. We went Delta. They asked for our vax cards and passport at the gate, typed something in but beyond that we didn’t have to show anything or fill out any forms.
Guessing here–Maybe since we went round trip all the info was already in the computer and it was checked off automatically. The EU form concerns only crossing borders information and since the only borders we crossed were into France and back out I’m guessing the airline information was sufficient.
@MADad --the attestation form basically says “I don’t have covid”. Signature and the date. Fairly worthless–they could save a few trees. In Paris airport they were out on tables to grab.