Would you credit it

[ewx]

My bank have written to me to say that they are going to stop issuing Visa credit cards and instead send me two credit cards, one an American Express and one a Mastercard, both backed by the same account.

Do you have an Amex? Is it accepted everywhere? (I have a feeling the answer to the latter is a resounding "no".)

Do you have a Mastercard? Is it accepted everywhere?

Can you see any advantage (to me) of this scheme that outweighs the nuisance of having two bits of plastic instead of one? (You get airmiles if you spend money on these cards but I don't travel enough for that to be actually useful and really I just want a credit card, I don't care about complicated reward schemes.) Apparently it's "more flexible" but I can't help but feel that it's just a way of increasing the chance of being at the top of a randomly sorted wallet.

Is there a credit card you'd recommend? I buy things online, over the phone and in person; I want to be able to pay off by direct debit monthly without incurring any interest; I don't want to pay any fees; I don't borrow money long term on credit cards.

To clarify:

• the Amex accumulates airmiles faster than the Mastercard does; it's not totally pointless if you actually care.
• the letter explicitly says "two credit cards", i.e. the Amex is a credit card too not just a charge card.
• I don't spend much time in rural Belgium.

Comments

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I've noticed lots of places say "no American Express". I'm sure Mastercard is OK though. Personally I've only ever used Visa though.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Although there's a difference between an AmEx card and an AmEx *credit* card.

[naranek.livejournal.com]

FWIW, my mastercard is my main credit card; I've not had a problem with it.
My amex card is a bit `odd' - not accepted everywhere and doesn't always authorise, so I don't really use it.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I have a Mastercard from my bank. It's accepted everywhere I've tried to buy things.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

I have only a Mastercard, and I've never had problems anywhere other than in rural Belgium.

[keirf.livejournal.com]

I don't have a Mastercard, and I too have never had problems anywhere other than in rural Belgium.

[duncanneko.livejournal.com]

Never had a problem with my mastercard either, it's the one my bank (HSBC) gave me.

[emperor]

I used to have a Mastercard and a Visa from HSBC, then said "now we will take one away, and leave you a Mastercard, unless you are an arsehole and make a fuss". So I now have a Visa card from them :)

I can't recall the last place I saw that took Visa and not Mastercard. Relatively few places take Amex, because it's expensive for the retailer to do so.

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

Oooh, more or less the same happened to me, except I missed the "if you are an arsehold" bit, which I might have been.

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

Mastercard is very widely accepted, but I hear that the systems behind it are slightly less reliable. I used to make a point of having both MC and Visa, but these days I only have Visa. On shopping round some time last year (when HSBC annoyed me enough!) I chose a Coop one.

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

I have a Mastercard as my secondary credit card -- it's actually M&S's store card, so I use it there as well as to buy petrol. Never had it refused anywhere, but since I tend to use my Visa there could potentially be places I shop that would refuse it.

The Visa is a Barclaycard Gold -- I didn't ask for the gold card, they gave it to me when I graduated. Apparently their rates aren't the best, but since I only ever use it for purchases and will never be in a situation where I can't pay the bill in full each month, I don't particularly mind that. I'd rather go with a big name I trust than shop around for lesser-known cards with 'benefits' that I won't use.

[nunfetishist.livejournal.com]

MasterCard and Visa are both organisations owned and run by their members. Given most banks are members of both schemes, the upshot is that they're owned by the same people, and some people would say they're the same company, save some monopolies and mergers investigations. MasterCard is pretty much accepted everywhere Visa is and vice-verse because of this. It's rare that you find one is accepted and the other isn't.

The AmEx card is an interesting choice, though.

[pne.livejournal.com]

MasterCard is pretty much accepted everywhere Visa is and vice-verse

That's the impression I had, too.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Egg Money. It's Mastercard and you get cashback. You can also pre-load it and get 4% interest on anything unspent, so you can win both ways!

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

cashback as in 'discount on all purchases', not as in 'getting some folding at the supermarket till'.

[timeplease.livejournal.com]

I do not accept American Express. I accept everything else.

There are two main reasons for this:

1. AmEx want a separate merchant agreement with you, which they will charge you a subscription for. All the other cards are dealt with through a single merchant agreement.
2. The per-transaction charge to the merchant on AmEx is about three times higher than on all other cards.

I did accept AmEx for a while at the Oakdale. It wasn't worth it - nobody uses it! - so I terminated the merchant agreement.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Is the Amex a credit card or not? The charge card was completely useless for me and cost money.

I've been places that don't accept Mastercard, and also to those that don't accept Visa, and obviously some places don't accept credit cards at all. I'd recommend travelling to other countries with a selection of credit and debit cards (don't get foreign currency on a Visa Debit card, whether here or abroad because it costs), but either Visa or Mastercard is fine for a day to day card in the UK.

There is a CC that I'd recommend, but not in an unlocked post. If you pay off in full each month (as I presume you do) then a cash back one is good.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Using a Visa Debit card in an ATM abroad is cheaper than using a credit card.

MBNA MasterCard for €70 in Apr 2007: Their exchange rate + £3 cash advance fee + 47p interest between xaction & statement date + 21p interest between statement & paid date. (Despite paying off in full.)

Barclays Visa Debit card for C$100 in Aug 2006: Their exchange rate [explicitly including £1.28 commission] + £1.50 fee.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Amex - no, no. (Is it an Amex charge card or credit card?)
Mastercard - yes, yes.

It's always worthwhile having two cards on different networks to work around the occasional one-network-wide outage, but in my case they're V & MC. Also, I tend to put online purchases on one card and physical purchases on the other.

Very few merchants take Amex in this country because of the ludicrous fees charged to merchants, both to subscribe and per-transaction. Very few punters carry Amex in this country because of the ludicrous card annual fee (at least if you approach Amex yourself, dunno about your case), and because so few merchants accept it. Very few merchants take Amex because nobody carries it...

Amex offers more airmiles precisely because they're charging exorbitant per-xaction fees.

All the banks are fighting to have their card in the "Top Of Wallet" position. Your nearby Payshield expert can tell you more ;-)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The letter specifically says "two credit cards". But it sounds like the Amex card will be next to useless in any case.

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

Lovin' the reversed out text stylee, hating the legibility...

[lnr]

Oh, I hadn't noticed (I always read LJ with ?style=mine).

rjk: I presume this means you believe the thing about white on black using less power for monitors to display than vice versa? Or is it just a coincidence?

(http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/black_google_wo.php for those who haven't seen it and are wondering what I'm on about)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Amex - ptui! They're not accepted in all that many places, mainly because of the way they treat those places that do.

As for the Mastercard/Visa thing - HBOS recently (well, a few months back) changed my standard Visa to a Mastercard, somewhat to my annoyance, because the only reason I was keeping that card was because it was a Visa, and I have encountered one place that takes Visa and not Mastercard.

One place.

A pizza bar in Basel, Switzerland (http://www.pizzabar.ch). (It's in Marktplatz, if you're interested. Oh, I can see you're not. OK, we only went there the once, and it was OK but not great.)

One place ever, and that was a few years ago.

Since I carry an MNBA Platinum Visa, it's not a real problem, but I'm bemused that HBOS haven't changed my HBOS Platinum Visa to a Mastercard (even though they noticed I never actually used it, and didn't bother sending me the new piece of plastic). But my card of choice is a Mastercard.

[covertmusic.livejournal.com]

HBOS are migrating everyone from Visa to Mastercard in instalments (whilst, a couple of years back, migrating everyone away from Maestro, a branch of Mastercard (formerly Switch) to Visa Delta.)

I can try and find out why (family ties) if anyone really cares, but I doubt it's very exciting.

[pm215]

My dad has an Amex as well as a Visa card, primarily because he gets some percentage cashback for using the Amex, so he finds it worth trying to use it where it's accepted. (He's particularly smug about the fact that my brother's university accepted Amex for payment of tuition fees; 1.5% back on that is worth having :-))

My personal recommendation is the Cooperative bank. I've had a visa card with them for years (because at the time they were offering it as "guaranteed fee-free for life" and my usage patterns match yours). It's been used for fraud a couple of times; each time the Coop has spotted it, contacted me and written off the fraudulent transactions without fuss or hassle. Being an occasional victim of fraud seems to me inevitable if you use a card (no matter how careful you are), so I think it's important that the card provider is good at dealing with it.

If you care about cashback but only want one card, the Egg Money card (not the plain old Egg credit card) does 1% up to a maximum of 200 quid. The disadvantage is that judging from the website it's got some bolt on 'pre-charge' feature (that you might just be able to ignore).

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Amex is totally pointless in this country.

I have a Tesco Mastercard, which gives extra reward points. So far this is the only credit card reward scheme which has actually rewarded me in any way, as I don't spend all that much on the cards.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Ooh, your journal's gone black.

I have a Mastercard and I've never had it turned down. No one credit card is better than any other, they all screw you over somehow.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

If you go for the American Express, make sure it's a real credit card and not just a charge card (for the purposes of Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974; this is the law that makes credit card companies jointly liable with suppliers).

If you always pay your bill in full by direct debit, then I think the most important things to look at are the fees for overseas purchases. The Nationwide credit card seems particularly good in this respect; comparison here (http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/savingideas/article.html?in_article_id=420438&in_page_id=512).

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The letter claims "two credit cards". Statutory CC provider liability is why I don't just put everything on my debit card.

[james-r.livejournal.com]

Amex - higher interchange fees, hence not accepted everywhere, although gaining in popularity.
Mastercard - memory suggests possibly more accepted in Europe and bits of Asia than Visa. I don't think I've found anywhere that takes visa but not mastercard since 2004 when I switched from barclaycard to virgin mastercard as the main card (although I now use the amex as the main card for the 4 airmiles / gbp spent).

If you don't want the airmiles, give them to me :-)

[damerell.livejournal.com]

The house credit card is Mastercard. It seems as universal as VISA.

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

Mastercard and Visa are both very widely accepted in most countries, AmEx much less so. It's good to have two credit cards on two different systems, I think, in case there's a glitch when you try to rent a car or something, so I usually advise having both MC and Visa credit cards at hand.

What sort of AmEx card? Is there still the AmEx place near Dillons? They used to offer various services from issuing cheques denominated in US dollars to helping travellers abroad. Before dismissing the AmEx card as useless I'd check if it entitles you to any interesting perks from AmEx.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

How long is it since you were in Cambridge?!! The Dillons branch at 22 Sidney Street became Waterstone's in 1999. The American Express agent at 25 Sidney Street closed three or four years ago; now a branch of Costa Coffee occupies that address.

[slakko.livejournal.com]

If you really care about getting frequent flyer miles of some description, you probably don't want them to be Air Miles (tm). Their redemption rates are much higher than you would pay with airlines directly (e.g. compare their star offer of the week 150 Airmiles to Nice (normally 300) + £59 tax - when you can get the flight direct from ba.com for £76 without using any miles). There are much better deals with cards linked to airlines (e.g. BA's Amex cards, AA's Citibank Visa cards) and hotels (Marriott's Visa cards, Hilton's MasterCard) - typically with introductory offers which get you halfway to a free European flight or free hotel night.

As for the credit cards themselves, I tend to carry 2 or 3 just in case one provider decides that they will randomly consider what I've just done worthy of some kind of restriction (one account I have tends to get a bit worried every single time I travel overseas - despite my doing this quite regularly). Spreading across Amex, MC and/or Visa just helps with the likelihood of acceptance.

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. Once, just as we were setting out on vacation, HSBC decided to cancel my credit card for, well, no reason that they could tell us. They were quite puzzled but, alas, couldn't just resurrect it with immediate effect.

[armb.livejournal.com]

I think the last time I cared whether I had a Mastercard or a Visa was 1984. If your bank's card meets your other requirements, I'd either stick the Amex card in a filing cabinet and forget about it, or ask them not to send me an Amex card.
http://www.fool.co.uk/credit-cards/rewards-credit-cards.aspx
http://www.fool.co.uk/credit-cards/cashback.aspx

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

I have a Mastercard (and for a while had visa too), and it was accepted everywhere Visa was and sometimes accepted in places visa wasn't. No idea about Amex - maybe it's for people who visit the States lots.