I am considering a switch in credit cards and am considering an American Express card with cashback benefits. This is a card I will be using in place of checks and checkcard and whose balance will be paid in full every month.
My concern is (based on Visa commercials) is that it isn’t accepted at many places. Rather than trusting the word of a competitor’s advertising, I want the Straight Dope from people with first-hand experience.
So, what have you encountered?
I’d say it’s accepted at 80-90% of the places I patronize. We put all of our groceries, gas, etc., on it, pay it off every month, and get lots of miles.
Last time I was in New Zealand lots of places didn’t take it. I notice quite a few online sevices don’t take it only accepting Visa, Mastercard and Bankcard. I have never had anyone not accept it in Australia.
Good point. My prior post regarded the US. There were a few places in Oz which didn’t take it last time I was down there, and lots of them in Enn Zed.
I am finding, as I make reservations for a trip to the UK, that many places don’t take it there either.
FWIW, my London guidebook warns against taking an AMEX card (or Diners’ Club) to the UK. They are definitely not as widely accepted as Mastercard and Visa.
I manily use American Express, but also have a Visa for back-up. I live in the US. The places I go where they don’t take Amex are:
[ul]
[li]the local tennis store[/li][li]Sam’s[/li][li]doctors and dentists[/li][/ul]
Pretty much everywhere else takes Amex.
Amex had a drive several years ago to sign up more small retail businesses (like mine) to take their cards and, while they took a slightly higher cut than the other cards I take, it was still worth it for the few people wanting to pay with it.
A couple of years ago they imposed an additional flat fee payable every month (£10? £15? I forget; something like that) payable whether or not there were any transactions that month.
I estimated that, if I were lucky, I would make no profit whatsoever on my annual Amex sales and quite probably make a loss; I stopped taking Amex. I believe a lot of other small traders have as well…
Most of the bigger, tourist-orientated businesses will take it, though.
As mentioned before, AmEx tends to have somewhat less market penetration because they take a bigger cut from the merchants. This, in part, because the “core” green and gold cards are not revolving-credit cards so they can’t sock the member with interest to the degree bank cards do. This dissuades many owner-operated small businesses from joining. In the USA, many “local” businesses are really owned by a larger corporation that can handle AmEx’s fees, so you get more acceptance than in some other places in the world. Abroad, it’s mostly good for major travel-related and business-expense transactions (e.g. Avis in London: AmEx; Nigel’s Bicycle Hire in Wankerham-on-Swyll: no AmEx).
also consider that some of those Visa commercials involve special consideration for exclusive rights (e.g. ‘the only official card at the Olympics’)
I generally find VISA is the most accepted, Mastercard a close second and AMEX a little farther off.
Most large companies (online and off) take Amex but most of the local smaller places don’t. Since Amex decided to jack up my interest rate (right as I finished paying my balance in full thankfully!) I’m getting rid of that card. They can kiss my ass if they expect to keep my busniess after jacking up my interest rate to 24%
Sheesh.
I find that some grocery stores don’t take American Express.
But I also have seen a huge improvement compared to about 2 or 3 years ago. I used to have a hard time finding places who would take Amex, now, it’s almost never a problem (in the US).