Does anyone take Virgin AMEX?

Scully's_Girl

Please forgive me if someone has complained about this before but I didnt see it.
A few weeks ago we switched from our beloved Virgin Mastercard to the new Virgin White American Express, since they had changed their card structure and you could no longer get the miles on the Mastercard.
Our spending has plummeted on this card, not because we spend less, but no one will take it. I cannot count the times I have had to pull out my debit card to meet a bill, or my Nationwide 0% (which we're technically saving for travel abroad only). Hence, we're not getting any of the miles we thought we would. Is anyone else having this problem? Its a pity but we might have to go for a new card, although we always loved our Virgin card. Why would they do such a thing?

djl

hi

I now have two amex cards and have the same problem. my dentist and ford dealer do not take amex its a pain in the bum. i allways carry a visa or mastercard incase shops don`t accept amex. there was a thread on mse under creditcards named "who accepts amex" or something like that. that may help you

:beer:

K9cuddles

I have Amex.. only brought it to use in Sainsburys.. so stop me spending on random/impulse purchases!!

There is a thread here of who accepts it!

iamchrisli

The big reason behind it is Amex charge higher fee for the mechant for accepting it.

And most of the small business's card processor does not have Amex module as default, they had to add it on (means they had to pay more to accpet Amex), therefore it would cost them more......

Scully's_Girl

Yes, I just got off the phone with Virgin. All they can say is that they "hope" more vendors will start to take AMEX in future. However, they admitted that Amex charges vendors 3% of a purchase, and Visa/Mastercard charge about 1%. Considering we are all forced to carry around secondary cards, where is the vendors motive for accepting AMEX in future? I asked why they switched & they said it was just a business decision that was "deemed best for both the customer and Virgin". My husband told them that he didn't believe the Customer part of that sentence, since it has only hindered our spending.

JoseChungsDoomsday

Virgin atlantice is trying to act the big lad with BA by changing the mastercard to amex to match them. I wont be changing over and when the card doesnt earn miles anymore I'll be moving to BMI

_Andy_

Yep have had similar problems but (this year at least) I think the 4 miles/6 miles on the Black card outweighs this. Plus also there is the Y>PE upgrade once you spend 7,5k.

Scully's_Girl

alexjohnson wrote:

It seems to me if your spend is mostly at these small places you probably aren;t spending that much. If you aren't, then you shouldn't be ciollecting air miles (of any flavour) in the first place as you'll never get enough to do anything; you'd be better off with a (Visa) cashback card.

What tipped me off was that we went on a holiday weekend near Hastings and the B&B didnt take it, nor did the restaurants we ate at or the activities we did, but then again, it just correlates with what you said. We'll see how it goes with our bigger spends. I think I'm just noticing now because people are actually denying it, whereas they didnt before. We spend a minimum of £2500 on our card every month, and our current bill is significantly lower, but then again, I love tea rooms and hiking trails in my free time.