American Express
Many companies are fuckwitted enough to use Amex as a corporate credit card, that means in most places in europe only US hotel chains and car hire places will accept it. ( so it costs more) it is a personal card but you are not liable, and my arse is a shirtbutton and michael jackson was not a child violinist
They also have this usage profile thing, which when you spend 6 months at a time in the workshop, the 1st day you go abroad on a job they cut off your card. " why do we use amex ?" oh because it`s unlimited.
yeah right, when it isn`t blocked.

I turn up in germany, and the rigger driver has had to abandon the tow truck as the gearbox is stuck in first, so I try to hire a van, declined by all the airport places as the amex card has been blocked. I hire one on my own card, we get the gear for the job loaded. I`ve lost the mobile phones in the truck ( this is 10 years ago I didn`t have my own then.) so we go in set up the sat tx dish, and I blag a line back to base. God bless baz my boss who toasted them, go back 2 years, 3 years and tell me it`s inconsistent, you cunch of bunts.

Here is the maddest thing, if went in to heathrow and took out $2000 (or was it $2.5k? one of those was the max cash advance) no-one raised an eybrow, but 300 quid in germany got blocked.

I did get all the stuff on my card refunded by the company and the interest paid, but I was nearly maxed out at £3k and it took 4 days to get the Amex card unfrozen, (Edit, the amex operator told my boss it was unfrozen the sme day, unfortuately real life didn`t support that assertion)the hotel didn`t take amex anyway, and I had a contractor to pay for. I was on edge so close to my credt limit.

we had one day off which was a public holiday, and I asked the girly at the hotel if she had any good recommendations for restaurants, we have greek, we have chinese and bavarian and we have Engiish.
I could see upside down "English" was the Taj mahal and creased up. I rang them and when i dropped into English got a brummie on line,and when i asked about cuisine, he said what do you want? the germans are a bit wimpy. can you do dosa`s? oh yes mate so we had a south indian feast, all the kerala dishes, my oppo was gobsmacked he`d never tried any of the veggy stuff and he lived not far from Southall.

I still don`t know how amex keep trading.
(tootired Is searching for a funny sig, nothing good so far, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 0:46, 1 reply)

AmEx are a funny one
Does anywere accept them? I do remember going into a CD shop in Brussels and asking the bloke at the counter whether I could pay for my purchases with a British Debit Card - "Yes," he said, "Visa's fine, we take most cards...as long as it's not American Express.*" They do just seem to be a bit of a joke universally.

_{*The above has been heavily paraphrased from what my less-than-wonderful-understanding-of-French was able to work out, and there is, therefore, the slight possibility that he may have actually been assuring me that my card was fine and would I like to pay an extra 40 Euros for a waffle-fuelled morning of passion with a local goat?}
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 20 Jul 2009, 12:34, closed)