Recent cruisers to Italy

[dancing]

Question. There is rumor going around that the merchants in Italy will not take US credit cards as the dollar is so low. Can anyone comment on this who has been to Italy recently?

thanks

[John&Betty]

Hi dancing,

 

The merchants could care less what country issued the credit card, they get paid in Euros. Don't worry, they will all be happy to take your credit and ATM cards.

 

John

[PersistenzaretiniKa]

u could find some problems with AMERICAN EXPRESS since it's too expensive for shops, they all prefer visa and mastercard circuit

[texancruzer]

We used our American Express all over Europe. Hotels in Rome and Barcelona. Restaurants in Rome, Dubrovnik, Aix-en-Provence and Barcelona. Shopped in Rome, Naples (Amalfi), Florence and Barcelona with it.

 

Now don't bother taking your Discover card. That was one we did not see accepted anywhere.

 

Visa and Mastercard are taken everywhere as is good ole cash !

 

Call your bank and ask if they have a "conversion fee" when you use your card in a foreign country. If so - keep this in mind when using it as it can add up.

[cokj72]

u could find some problems with AMERICAN EXPRESS since it's too expensive for shops, they all prefer visa and mastercard circuit

 

The American Express is not good in plus store, but in the famous "MODA" store: Armani, Prada etc. is ok

[Hlitner]

We just returned from Italy (3 days ago) and you can trust me that we had no problem using our MC and Visa (if you doubt me I will let you pay the statements). As to AMEX, it is not a popular card with many restaurants and merchants (and even some hotels) because AMEX charges merchants a much higher percentage than MC and Visa. In a related subject, frequent travelers have long lauded the CapitalOne Master Card because it does not charge fees that are built (or now disclosed) by many other cards (usually 2 or 3 %).

For us, we still get the best rates by simply using our ATM card (our credit union does not charge any ATM fees for foreign use).

Hank

[GloriaF]

We returned from Rome a little more than a week ago and did the same as Hank: we used our Visa with no problems sometimes, but usually we just got cash with our ATM card and paid with cash.

[cruiseluv]

Question. There is rumor going around that the merchants in Italy will not take US credit cards as the dollar is so low. Can anyone comment on this who has been to Italy recently?

thanks

 

That rumor is baseless. Just came back from Europe, we stopped at several Italian ports among others. No problem with CC being accepted. Some merchants would ask if I wanted to be charged in $$$ or Euros. I always picked Euros , as I have read that if you select $$$ you will get a worse exchange rate that if you let your bank do it.

[PersistenzaretiniKa]

We used our American Express all over Europe. Hotels in Rome and Barcelona. Restaurants in Rome, Dubrovnik, Aix-en-Provence and Barcelona. Shopped in Rome, Naples (Amalfi), Florence and Barcelona with it.

 

Now don't bother taking your Discover card. That was one we did not see accepted anywhere.

 

Visa and Mastercard are taken everywhere as is good ole cash !

 

Call your bank and ask if they have a "conversion fee" when you use your card in a foreign country. If so - keep this in mind when using it as it can add up.

 

 

were u talking to me? if so i didn't understand what u said.

 

anyway i live here and i know what i talk about . it's along long time i've been seeing an american express around. a lot of people here got rid of american express cards

[texancruzer]

were u talking to me? if so i didn't understand what u said.

 

anyway i live here and i know what i talk about . it's along long time i've been seeing an american express around. a lot of people here got rid of american express cards

 

Not specifically - just posting my observations/experiences from our visit/cruise in November.

 

We did in fact use our American Express card quite a bit. We like to use it first as we get rewards points and we use those to buy our airline tickets --- like when we flew to Europe :D Saved us $ 1700.00 bucks :eek: Actually I can't remember the last time I BOUGHT an airline ticket.

[Jen&Joe]

My parents just got back from Europe (Amsterdam and then all over Germany) and they found that alot of places were in fact not taking credits cards.

[rebeccalouise]

I was in Europe last summer, Italy, Croatia, Greece, and England. The only place I had trouble with my credit card was a shop along the Rialto Bridge.

 

Turned out my credit card company wasn't accepting the charges since I had not called them to let them know that I would be in Europe. So they don't put them through.

 

Make sure to notify your credit card company in advance of your trip. I have had problems this year lining up reservations for Europe because my credit card company wasn't aware of my travel plans. So they kept denying the overseas charges.

[vanna]

Just got back from Italy, Turkey and Greece just a week a ago and did not have any problems at all using my visa & mc, as well as, my debit visa. As others have posted, make sure to let you cc and bank know that you'll be traveling because they may think of the charges as suspicious activity and decline the charges.

[FLACRUISER99]

Use Capital One Visa - No foreign transaction fee - The only card I know of without this fee

[San Diego Ellie]

I just got back from Italy three days ago. Merchants who take credit cards will take US credit cards. There are merchants who just want cash, and cash means euros, never US dollars. We used credit cards frequently, and we live in California, so this is a false rumor. There would be no reason for it, as they get paid in euros.