No option to pay with Amex??

mjt said:
Main advantage in my case is lack of limit. Great for large purchases and months were spending is higher than normal.
Getting MasterCard to raise the limit is a royal PITA, as is paying the card off early as it's on DD.
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Amex do indeed have account limits based on your credit profile. One soft limit and one hard limit. The hard limit is basically 'this person is not good for this purchase'.

Bald-Eagle22 said:
It's bonkers , merchants are missing out on a large percentage of the corporate world - big spenders,
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They're not missing out on anything: literally everyone who has an Amex also has Visa or MasterCard.

Only gripe is their lousy exchange rate. Or rather foreign currency transaction fee. Their exchange rate is actually decent :p
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Why not use a transaction free credit card abroad, then, like the Post Office Platinum?
 
[FnG]magnolia;25696957 said:
Each terminal? No. Each pipe connection coming from individual merchants and then routed through one or more switches based on pre-negotiated basis splits? Yes.
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Did you use those random words to make it sound more technical
 
Hatter The Mad said:
Amex do indeed have account limits based on your credit profile. One soft limit and one hard limit. The hard limit is basically 'this person is not good for this purchase'.


They're not missing out on anything: literally everyone who has an Amex also has Visa or MasterCard.


Why not use a transaction free credit card abroad, then, like the Post Office Platinum?
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Rubbish , a lot of the corporate world have company Amex cards and are only allowed to use these for business expenditure and believe me in the corporate world this is Billions world wide . It's easy accounting for them instead of having individual P & L 's . I work with two massive corporations in London who use exclusively AMEX .
 
From when I applied for merchant acceptance with Barclays, I would have to make a separate application to Amex directly to accept their cards.

It actually takes more effort to apply to get Amex.
 
pimper said:
Looking at making a substantial purchase here and I found that you don't take Amex. Whilst I know I can pay by DC or Paypal etc. I tend to just use CC for online purchases.

Do OcUK not take Amex due to higher charges than other credit card companies?
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Do you have an Amex Centurion?
 
Bald-Eagle22 said:
Rubbish , a lot of the corporate world have company Amex cards and are only allowed to use these for business expenditure and believe me in the corporate world this is Billions world wide . It's easy accounting for them instead of having individual P & L 's . I work with two massive corporations in London who use exclusively AMEX .
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This.

Mrs A spends substantially more on her corporate Amex card than her annual salary (flights and hotels, for other people unfortunately). If you don't take Amex then you don't get business from her company.
 
Bald-Eagle22 said:
Rubbish , a lot of the corporate world have company Amex cards and are only allowed to use these for business expenditure and believe me in the corporate world this is Billions world wide . It's easy accounting for them instead of having individual P & L 's . I work with two massive corporations in London who use exclusively AMEX .
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How many corporate customers do you think OC's miss out on?

It really depends on the business, the charges that they can negotiate (smaller business' won't have much negotiating powers) and if they need to, will their business customers accept an additional charge.

I used to run a small family owed petrol station and they didn't accept American Express as they wanted a set up fee plus 2.1% of each transaction which was double the cost of any other card.

We never lost a sale, but it wasn't on a motorway or a commuter belt.

Now for other business' ie Taxi's, if you want to attract business users and your margins are big enough then yes, absolutely no reason not to.
 
Krispy Kreme don't accept it, you know, the American franchise. Obviously this is a massive issue..
 
I quite like my AmEx, partly because my points are huge with them right now (22k welcome bonus, plus I put my season ticket on it which has 2 or 3x points).

I don't really have an issue with limited acceptance of it. I wish Lego accepted it... and I was amazed the other day when Subway told me they didn't. But most other places I'd like to use it are happy to accept it.

I suspect in a few months I'll get a Tesco credit card, for those times when my AmEx isn't accepted, and after my year is up on my gold, I'll probably switch to a BA Avios premium. That said, I need to do some number crunching on the clubcard credit card, to work out if you convert the points to avios whether it gives a better return rate than the BA Avios Amex.

kd
 
As a side question, does anyone how to spend an Amex US Dollar gift card in the UK? I've been sent a $100 card but I'm stuffed if I can find a way to spend it...
 
On my store, I started at 2.8% charges for MasterCard and visa, now my store is doing a million through cards I'm down to 1.8%.

American Express has been offered to us but the fees are 5% for new customers, it just pays people's air Miles.

We pay the same rate for MasterCard or MasterCard world.
 
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Jono8 said:
Not true really. It is accepted by most major retailers/companies now.

Granted though, for smaller shops and businesses you will still need a visa/mastercard but to say it is accepted in so few places isnt true.

Since having one i have been surprised at just how many places do take it actually!
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Ok, let me rephrase it, most places I shop at don't accept it. :p
 
Where on earth do you shop? :p

As above B&Q don't but the only other big chain I can think of is KFC and that's because they're a franchise so I think it varies store-to-store. Certainly for the bulk of most people's spend - fuel and groceries - then everywhere takes it.
 
I noticed that Showcase cinemas don't accept it, along with the majority of local businesses I use, but ASDA, Morrisons and Sainsbury's all accept it, so no worries for the majority of my rewards-earning credit purchases.
 
Mynight said:
I could be wrong but they stopped accepting it in my old nightclub due to charge-backs. Amex apparently was rather trigger happy with charge-backs and as soon as a customer who spent too much claimed fraud they'd issue the charge-back. Even after amex was given evidence (cctv) they gave back the money but wouldn't wave the charge-back fee.

Apparently the burden of proof is on the business owner to prove the customer was there and it wasn't fraud.
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This was always hilarious when I worked in that department, thousands spent at a gentlemans club, chip and pin, and claiming it was fraud? No sir, you were drunk. Still, have to take their word for it so it's good for the card holder.

But yes, the second highest complaints I received were about the card not being accepted somewhere, usually followed by "they said your fees were too high!"
 
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mjt said:
+1

Main advantage in my case is lack of limit. Great for large purchases and months were spending is higher than normal.
Getting MasterCard to raise the limit is a royal PITA, as is paying the card off early as it's on DD.

<3 Amex

Only gripe is their lousy exchange rate. Or rather foreign currency transaction fee. Their exchange rate is actually decent :p
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Most merchants should be able to offer you the option to pay in your own local currency I know we offer this with our terminals automatically if it's a non uk registered card and the exchange rates for Amex are pretty decent according to some of our clients ( we get a print out of the top 50 currencies or so to GBP every morning
 
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