Saturday, July 5, 2008
American Express is not everywhere you want to be...
I am completely baffled by the Brit's frustration with credit cards. For instance, today at a gift shop at the Roman Baths, I paid for my souvenirs with my Visa card. The woman behind the counter looked a little annoyed at me and the processing time took forever. I am talking a good minute and a half to two. She then had to verify my signature on the receipt with the one on the back of the card. I have never seen that in the States. Then, at dinner, two of us paid with debit cards and the waitress looked as if she was about to explode. She took one card and dissappeared for 10 minutes only to return with a handheld processing maching. Then, she did the same thing with the second card and returned AGAIN witht the machine. It took about 25 minutes for all of us to pay. Was it just bad service or are credit cards really all that different over here? I was under the impression that traveling with a credit card was actually smarter than cold hard cash, or at least that is the rumor circulation throughout our country. Is it just an American thing to carry around several plastics in your wallet? I am definitely confused.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I completely agree that traveling with cash has been much easier than I thought. The worst part about using credit cards is that there is a fee every time you use it. It seems so much smarter to me to just go to the ATM where there's no exchange fee than to pay with a card that is going to charge for each transaction. The other weird thing that I've seen is how paranoid people are about their pin numbers. I guess cards get stolen a lot so cash is safer?
Use the ATM, get pounds, use those. Much much simpler, and you'll get a good rate. Visa kinda messes with the rates.
Paying for a group dinner here is practically impossible. You can just forget about getting separate checks! I find it absolutely ridiculous that the restaurants here all expect you to carry exact change! The best part is when the server looks at you like you are an uneducated oaf when you ask to use a credit card or to get the check split up. I have not been pleased at all with the UK's lack of credit card acceptance.
I have not had quite the same experience here in Oxford with using a credit card but they certainly do go to extremes to verify one's identity. Mimi and I went to Boot's for Ibuprofen and the man behind the counter MADE Mimi sign the back of here card before accepting her payment. He then proceeded to check her id and signature several more times before giving her her bag and sending us on our way. I also spoke to a bartender about American Expres cards. He said many places don't take them because of all the trouble they have to go through to use them abroad. Apparently, upon entering another country, one must call American Express to verify identity and get clearance to use the card abroad. It's a time consuming hassle that shop and pub owners just don't want to deal with.
American Express is a bad credit card company, my self i have 3 card from american express and i never late on any credit card company. 3 month a go they send an email on the three account and reduce my credit limit to around 1500.00 i called and complaint that why are you doing this to the good customer? the only excuse they respond is because of the market high risk situation. I was very upset and go along with the situation. As of today i receive another email from AMEX and this time they reduce one of my card to 900.00 limits, this time it realy hit me because they already reduce this card in the past and i never max out the credit limit. This blue express original credit is 5K and they reduced to 1,200.00 and now they reduce to 900.00 this is really horrible way to treat the good customer. I told them on the other hand you guy are crying loud to ask the congress to back you out for billion of dollars tax payer money and the other side you freaking reduce credit limit from the customer that have a excelent credit. THIS IS VERY UNFAIR AND I ADVISE TO ALL OF YOU....! THINK IT TWICE BEFORE YOU USE THE CREDIT FROM THIS COMPANY. THIS IS NOT WORTH IT.
Post a Comment