Amex Travellers Cheque Card

There is another strand on this with more comments. If you look at my old posts you should be able to find it.

We had one of these and it worked out fine. The hotel we were at accepted it and we paid $500 towards our hotel bill. If you use an ATM be aware there is a $2.50 charge per withdrawal and then you will pay whatever fee the ATM owner charges on top, in our case this was $2 per transaction i.e. $4.50 total. So its not worth taking small amounts of cash out. There is also a daily cash withdrawal limit from ATM's. In addition you are not covered if the Amex division running this goes bust.
You have to plan your transactions carefully in order to empty the card, there is still $11 on ours and it will stay there until our next trip because the increment on the ATM was $20.
The card comes through the post so I'm not sure if you will get it in time for your trip.

I picked up a couple of these last week. You can get the card straight away as long as you have ID (passport or driving license should do) and the cash or debit card balance.

It takes about 30 mins depending on how clued up the staff is.

Transaction fee is £7.50 for now (half of usual £15 price).

Offer applies to joint or individual cards.

One point to be aware of .. Thomas Cook's exchange rate for Travellers Cheques is markedly lower than elsewhere. We got 1.67 compared to my citibank account which was 1.74 on same day.

Even so, with the free cash, its a good little earner, even if you were to take the remainder of the balance out via ATM and exchange it back (assuming you have a significant amount left). I think the max daily withdrawal is £250.

The exchange rate is controlled by AMEX not the travel agent when buying the TCC - I know this coz I work for one of Thomas Cook's big rivals.

We are selling the card too but give $100 free on a $1000 purchase and it is sold from stock so you get the card in your hand - whole purchase takes about 5 minutes. We don't charge any fee for the card - normally it's £20, but I don't think we've ever charged, there's always been some offer or other on it. You can also get it in Euros - same quantity applies.

Or there's another offer running - get one with Euro200/$200 on it, top it up to Euro1000/$1000 by the end of Sept and still get the 100 free. I think if you go on AMEX site and do it direct with them they don't offer as much free. Am guessing that Thomas Cook may have same offer but not sure. When you do it that way they post the card to you - I bought mine on the Friday and had it on Tuesday. And taking the offer was better than using the staff purchase option.

Oh forgot to say - you can get a max of 4 cards on the one account which has a max load limit of £3000 over it's 3 year life.

Hope this helps!
cheers
Col