American Express Card

High priced hotels and fancy restaurants, fine, elsewhere, eh. Wouldn't have it as my go to card, but bring it along if you have some reward points you want to collect. Some places will take it, but because they charge higher merchant fees, it is not real popular.

Rental car companies all take Amex. Most hotels do as well not just the high end ones but you will come across some hotels especially ones that are family owned or not part of a chain that do not take American Express. At restaurants and smaller merchants, I have found that there is usually a decent chance that American Express will not be accepted.

I know you asked about France, but Germany likely to be similar experience. I was recently there with someone who asked about using AMEX at every shop and restaurant we visited (at least 20) and only 2 accepted AMEX. These were not in small towns and not mom & pop places either, some large department stores and nicer restaurants too.

It is used but is not as widely accepted as Visa and Mastercard. If you must use your AMX card then take it along but also carry either of the other two.

I agree with Anita. I have an Amex from Costco and hardly ever use it even at home. I take a Visa card traveling, as here.

We take our Amex cards only for auto rental -- to get the Amex coverage. United Explorer Visa has no foreign currency charges snd we get miles, so that's the card of choice

One of the benefits of having an Amex card is that if some financial problem occurs, they will wire you several hundred dollars. They also are very good about replacing lost or stolen cards while overseas (some credit card companies will only send replacement cards to your billing address).

Two years ago, we were getting ready for our trip to France. Wanting to make sure I had the information for my credit cards, I went downstairs to my computer/printer to make copies.

Now, consider that we were at New York's JFK and I started looking for my credit cards. They were not in my billfold. Of course, my husband became quite upset and wondered where I had lost the cards. I didn't know but hoped they were at home. Since I had the paper copies, I had all the information I needed to contact the card companies and promptly did so. American Express was the only CC company that made it easy to get a replacement card. I could pick it up three days later at the office at the Nice airport. There would be no charge!!!!! I was amazed at how easy it was for me.

For the rest of the cards, those companies had tried to call my home phone number for authorization but since I was in France, there was no one to answer the phone. I also didn't have my ATM card so I had to rely on my husband for money. He loved that, I hated it.

I did find that I couldn't use the Amex card at a shopping center in Germany but at least I had a card.

We have also used Amex when renting cars in Europe and found a very good insurance plan with Amex for liability insurance.

Where were the credit cards? When I got home, I found them on the printer screen just waiting for me to return. They were quite upset about missing the trip to France! :)

Last year n Salzburg,I got an email from Capital One that our Vias Card had been compromised,I called Capital and explained that I would be in St Wolfgang that day and five more days,we had new Capital One Visa Cards in two days delivered to our Hotel in the Alps,that is service.
Mike