Stolen Credit Card Information

[turtle fast]

Yes cash is king, especially in the little mom and pop places on the trail that don't accept credit cards. I also have seen a trend with merchants with the card chip where they don't even check the card... In fact several merchants I've delt with actually teach employees that they "didn't need to verify the chip cards"!!!

[Snowleopard]

Read up on ATM card skimmers; a VA credit union had problems last year with thieves using skimmers on its ATMs to get customer card numbers and PIN.
http://wtvr.com/2015/06/03/what-is-a...eing-a-victim/

I hate credit cards and love debit cards, but credit cards are more secure -- its easier to recover fraudulent charges with a CC than a debit card.

[Datto]

Another option for Internet purchases is PayPal. Since PayPal is now a seperate independent company Wal-Mart and other retailers (REI for instance) is having PayPal as a payment option.

The real challenge on an AT thru-hike is getting stuff delivered to you if you don't already have a maildrop support person in-place. You'll likely end up having to ship to a General Deliver address (Post Office) or to a hostel/motel location. Some on-line retailers will not deliver to either.

Make sure you announce yourself as an AT thru-hiker if you order by voice phone and try to get stuff delivered to you on the AT.

By far, the best results I've every had when having to order from a long-distance trail is ordering from http://www.backcountrygear.com -- these people were familiar with long-distance hiking and the challenges of getting stuff shipped to a long-distance hiker so I've always called them first (sometimes from a timbuktu mountaintop on a trail, paying to get a delivery up ahead in a few days so I don't have to wait). You might call them ahead of time and make sure they remain thru-hiker friendly for you.

Also, some manufacturers of hiking gear are also aware of what long-distance hiking is about regarding things replaced or new stuff shipped in (Granite Gear was easily the best for me -- another gear maker on this board was easily the very worst (useless would be the nicest thing I could say) so I can't mention them here since even years later I'm still zippessed about their abandonment of long-distance hikers (yet the last time I looked, they still continued to take money from long-distance hikers providing absoluteloy no support).

REI has been very spotty for me when ordering from a long-distance trail so I don't go there first if I need to get something delivered. Pearson and I stll chuckle when we were on the PCT about dealings with REI. Maybe they've improved -- I don't know for sure -- the last order was just a few months ago and I ended up having to contact the REI President with a not-so-nice-rant when their website kept bombing on me. They had some kind of bad-thing-happening event with no redundancy (I shook my head back and forth when the President had their IT people contact me -- sounded like they didn't have any money to me but then again, redundance and reliability is what I have been paid very well to do for a living).


Datto