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[tyreless]

Not a language topic but still relevant for anybody travelling to Latin America.

American Express advertises that it�s Travellers Cheqques are refunded worldwide within 24 hours. For Latin America this does not hold true as I have found out by personal experiences. I�ve been hassling them for around 7 weeks by now.

SA smmilar reports have appered on the net about Africa.
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/391/RipOff0391586.htm

In both cases refund was claimed via the US office.

My advice. Don�t use AMEX.

[Guy Courchesne]

American Express has been problematic in Mexico too. Many vendors, stores, and hotels won't accept their credit cards due to high fees. Traveler's cheques can be a real pain to cash here too. Pretty much only hotels and banks will cash them, though banks will often tell you they have 'no system that day' and to come back another time.

Debit cards or a VISA credit card is the best way to go I think.

[Prof.Gringo]

[Justin Trullinger]

When I was in Korea, briefly, I got paid in Amex travellers checks. (Long story, but couldn't do a wire transfer when I needed to.)

Because the denomination of the checks was large ($1000 each), nobody here would cash, change, or deposit them. Nobody at all in Ecuador. Not my bank, not any bank. Not anybody, including the local Amex office for cryin out loud.

After much searching, I found a CASINO in a rough part of town that would change them, for cash only, for a 15% comission.

Luckily, I wasn't in a hurry to spend them, and kept them around for a few months until I visited the US. My US bank allowed me to deposit them. BUT they wouldn't allow immediate access to the funds- I had to deposit them in an account, then wait for 5 days to be able to access the $$.

Whoever said American Express is the same as cash had a funny idea about how cash works.

Personally, I've set up some additional banking precautions to make sure this doesn't happen again. Traveller's cheques are a thing of the past.


best,
Justin