Gather around friends, it’s travel anecdote time:
In the wake of de-legitimization of 500 and 1000 Indian Rupee bank notes, the employees of Bwfs India, representing Finnair in India really went out of their way to make life miserable for me today at the New Delhi Airport!
We had extra baggage and the only option they gave us to pay for extra baggage was a Cash payment of 12,000 INR (~175 EUR) !
Because of the drastic decision the Indian government took last night, meant that this payment had to be done in denominations of 100 INR or less. The excuse of the BWFS-Finnair employees for not accpeting #Cashless modes of payment was (P.S. this is after I proposed the idea, they couldn’t care less if we travel with/without our luggage) :
We don’t accept any kind of Debit card (Foreign or Indian), or Foreign Credit cards. We can only take Indian credit cards.
Who in the right frame of mind walks around with that kind of money in their wallet?
On a pickpocket’s lucky day, they should probably be happy if they can find anything more than 20 Euros cash in my wallet. Between me and my wife, fortunately we had enough money to get out of the situation. The literally squeezed every single coin we had.
And the funny thing is that each time I’ve travelled around the world, I’ve used my cards issued by Danske Bank Suomi without any hassle or currency barriers!
And just for the record, after the BWFS people stripped us off for all the cash we had (Euro and INR), we are currently traveling to my home (~170km from the Helsinki airport) via public transportation, and we’re doing it completely #Cashless, and it is as Hassle-free, as it has always been!! Feels great to be home!
- BWFS India is an agency that has contracts to cater to several international flights on behalf of the airlines who operate just one flight to the New Delhi Airport. It is cost-effective for the airline, and good business for this agency.