List of Major Credit Cards
Most important credit cardsThe American Express: Who' ll take Amex?
We haven't been updating this item for some time, but we wanted to keep it on the site because it may still contain useful information for you. We haven't been updating this item for some time, but we wanted to keep it on the site because it may still contain useful information for you.
In recent years American Express credit cards have more and more been given out by bankers instead of the old common culprits Visa and Mastercard. It is often not relevant whether your credit cards are American Express (Amex) or Visa/Mastercard, as the interest rate and promotions you are paying are set by the credit cards company (e.g. Lloyds TSB, HSBC).
However, a major client problem was that fewer merchants accepted it as a means of paying in comparison to the two huge ones (if you're not sure if you have one, look at the bottom right hand of your card). It is a complete list provided by Amex, the retailer who accepts it as a means of payments, and there is a comfortingly large number.
When you try to use an Amex map in one of these locations and have a problem, please let us know in the feed -back threads.
The Netherlands... please begin using credit cards!
The Netherlands... please begin using credit cards! While people in the USA run away happy and earn a million points a year or 5 points per dollars with a threefold incentive on travelling costs, the Netherlands seems to have got bogged down in the mid-1980s with its poor credit card acceptability.
Only two railway yards in the whole county are accepting credit cards: Also then there is a supplement of 0,50 on the purchase of a tickets. In order to buy a tickets at a staffed counter that also gets the supplement of ?0,50. However, the only way to circumvent this charge is to use the automatic newsstands and make payments using either coin or a Netherlands direct debit key.
Not all vending systems still today are able to handle coin and banknotes! Allow me to tell you how I came to the Netherlands for an interview last year at this particular moment. This was a full days excursion from London, and when I got to Schiphol I had to take a two-hour rail journey to the northern Drenthe area.
Buying my way back to Schiphol, I chose to buy a one-way fare in Schiphol with the intent to buy my way back in the evenings if my plan had to be changed for any reasons. About 30 seconds after 17 o'clock I reached the railway yard for my way back.
For the first I went to the vending machines to find out that I couldn't buy my way back because it didn't have a pay slit. I didn't have 24 in cash anyway!) Only Netherlands debits that I didn't have were allowed. My memory of the period is good, because the employee of the Netherlands Railway at the cash register had just closed the doors and went behind her desktop to collect the cash and declined to help me.
Finally we had to get on the plane without a tickets and hopefully the examiner would agree with our history. Thus they forfeited 24 euros in income for the Netherlands Railways from someone who was willing to afford them. It is only possible to make payments with money or a Netherlands direct debit account.
You can' use your international credit cards. Visa and Mastercard are the two cards you can ever use for everyday use. However, the fun thing is that I know so many Netherlands citizens who like to score points and following allegiance programs etc.. There is a program here named Air Miles (which is total bullshit by the way) to which everyone is a member, but the general community is so against credit cards.
I' m working in an agency full of brilliant people, but the thought of owning some kind of credit cards, if only for additional security when shopping on the web, is answered with a chill. However& if American Express chose to unlock a 100,000 point sign-up credit instead of their miserly 8,000 MR offer, I think things would be different.
That kind of number is enough for the amateur to travel to another continents and back, and the Netherlands really like it. People say that when you move to a new land, you should adopt your own cultural life and adjust to it...but I find it completely unrealistic that things like vending machines don't take tickets from abroad!
Did I whine too much, or do I have good reasons to hating the Netherlands trade? Shall I try harder to understand things the way they are, or am I allowed to handle things the way I do? How much experience have you had with your cards? How do you use your past cards?