How to pay on recreation.gov – US National Parks, etc.

[PeteM]

I’ve been trying to enter the lottery for The Wave on recreation.gov, but it won’t accept any of my UK-issued cards (Visa, MC or Amex). Is there a trick I am missing? Any help greatly appreciated 🙂

[nectar collector]

I’ve successfully paid for park tickets etc on Recreation.gov using my Wise card

[e14]

Chase debit card

[PeteM]

Thanks, both – have tried both without success 🙁

I’ve also tried every possible permutation of my address and post code, but it doesn’t seem to help either. Grr!

[strickers]

VPN?

[PeteM]

Sooooo!

I went to use my VPN as per @strickers. So I reached for my phone. Which then gave me the option to use Apple Pay on the website. Which then happily accepted my Curve card.

Suspect it may have been using Apple Pay that made it go through, but thank you for the prompt, which ultimately resolved the problem 🙂

[BJ]

Just as an aside to this and it may no longer apply as I’m going back two decades plus when I frequently visited USA. Back then popping into a AAA office with a UK AA member card used to score you all sorts of freebies like maps and coupons for theme parks etc. Obviously maps are no longer much use to anybody but discounts and promos are. I’m not even sure AAA offices still exist in the digital era though.

[caj2310]

Have you tried using Amex and using a random address in the US – maybe something associated with the transaction / company you are trying to book? In my experience Amex rarely uses address verification.

Same goes for Pay at Pump or MetroCard machines in the US when it needs a zip code. I just enter 90210 🙂