American Express Euro cheque rip off
 

Please help Fodorites by confirming if you were charged for using Euro travellers cheques in Europe & if you were able to use them at all.

I have just returned from Italy. Not 1 restaurant, not 1 shop & not 1 bank in Rome or Florence was prepared to accept Euro cheques. The American express office by the Spanish Steps in Rome - which claims to be the only American Express office in Italy - charged 3% plus a handling charge for cashing my euro cheques. Despite holding their wallet that states I was entitled to the same value euro cash for each euro cheque I was still charged 3% of its value. The manager when he eventually returned from his lunch explained I had an old version of the wallet & charges had been introduced over 5 months ago.The charge is for the cost of insuring the possible loss & also for the security a euro cheque provides. A couple from Brazil & an American serviceman joined in my argument with the manager that we should obtain the full value of our euro cheques. We were given a phone to call the American Express help line but they cut the serviceman off & told the Brazilian couple to speak to the manager.

I returned the next day & got a copy of the new wallet but this does not state that I should be charged for cashing in my cheques there.

I used euro cheques in France last year - restaurants, banks, shops & garages - no charge.
I used dollar cheques in USA - no charges anywhere.
I have used euro cheques in Ireland - no charges anywhere..

I am preparing to write for a full refund of these charges & want to know if anyone else in Europe has been charged. Just say what country you used them & confirm no problem.

If you do a search, you will find almost daily threads on this forum advising against using travelers checks of any kind. I gave up on travelers checks years ago because of the fees and difficulty of cashing.

Travelers checks are dinosaurs. They've been next to useless for at least a decade. There are countless threads here on Fodors about this, including ones that tell you that NO ONE in Italy will ever accept them for payment.

Hardly anyone here is likely to tell you what country they used them in because hardly anyone ever uses them anymore, but good luck with your complaint.

I would never use travelers cheques in Europe unless you are paying upwards of 1000 euros. You are much better off visiting the many, many, many ATM machines on a daily or every other day basis. Just be careful where you find your atm.

I would suggest that instead of travellers cheques, you take a box of tomahawks, blankets, trade beads and plug tobacco.
They will be just as readily accepted as travellers cheques.

Can you say ATM card? Good, now that's what you want to take from now on.

Ditto ditto StCirq.

Take your complaint to the CEO of Amex. With his bailout and bonus cash you might get a refund.

If you kept your cashing receipt and the original wallet, you will have a good case for getting a refund of the 3% from Amex at home.

Travelers check are obsolete. No one wants them in any country in europe. Banking, just like here, is all electronic - and you should have been using your credit cards and ATMS cards to pull small amounts of walking around money. This gives you by far the best rate of exchange (1 to 3% over the Interbank rate, versus 8 to 10% for Trav Checks or cash)>

I wasn't aware that AmEx Trav Checks were still available - and haven't used them for at least 8/9 years.

If you had done any research, all of this would have been perfectly clear.

You can try to get a refund from the office where you bought them - but have already paid a large fee to change $ to euros - and will have to pay another to change the euros back to $.

I have previously had no trouble with euro or dollar cheques for the last 10 years & was hoping for a quick poll on how people got on in other countries.

From horror stories of pick pockets etc I decided to take travellers cheques. Credit cards available to me would have incurred charges. The three apartments required cash payments which meant I was carrying over 5500 euro to cover that charge plus spends. I did not feel safe carrying all that cash & I had not had any trouble before.

So if anyone else has had trouble please advise or if in other european countries they are accepted still please let me know.

Travellers cheques are not accepted by shops and restaurants in the Netherlands and as far as I know never have been. You always had to find a bank or GWK to exchange them.
They certainly aren't welcome now, even though the GWK still sells them, and exchanges them.

Their terms for travellers cheques - which are AMEX cheques btw are:
You buy travellers cheques at GWK Travelex:
2.75% of the cheque value + € 2.25

You cash travellers cheques at GWK Travelex
2.75% of the cheque value + € 2.25

For paying for your apartments you could probably have asked your bank to up your withdrawal allowance whilst abroad to the amount of the most expensive apartment, and just withdrawn that amount per apartment. No need to carry it all around with you.

>>>>So if anyone else has had trouble please advise or if in other european countries they are accepted still please let me know.<<<<

No one else uses travelers cheques and no one has for years. I traveled with someone in 2001 that tried to use them (he got them in euro instead of $) and no one would take them. They were worthless. Everyone uses ATM cards for money even for apartments or they arrange a payment through such things as international draft through their bank or Paypal.

>>>was hoping for a quick poll on how people got on in other countries.<<<

You are likely the only person on this board using TC's.

I remember...the time of the IBM PC, TVs that used antennas and cellphones the size of bricks. Ah, the good old days of travellers cheques...

TCs are not the way to go. Just as you use an ATM at home,you can use one abroad. I don't think that anywhere you went would require any more security than at home

Also, do not be fooled by "no charge" With currency transactions, there are two components...the fee and the exchange rate. Just because at some point you paid no "fee" does not mean you did not "pay". What was the exchange rate for those euro cheques?

There are many other ways to pay for appartments, you will find a lot of people here who rent appartments and I guarantee they do not use TCs.

You could have paid for the apartments by:

international wire transfer - at a cost of about $15.00

international draft in euros - at a cost of about $5.00

Paypal - not sure of the actual cost, but not much

international postal order - for a few bucks

getting your bank to temporarily increase your ATM withdrawal limit.

It's a wonder people still dare to ask questions on this board.

For the record, my bank in Paris was pushing traveler's checks before this vacation season started, so they (at least in France) have not completely disappeared. And while they may not be common in Western Europe and are certainly difficult to use, I am sure there are places in the world that lack convenient ATMs and still see the use of traveler's checks.

The last time I tried to cash an AmEx gift check, it was in the US and the bank did not charge me a fee, but that was over a year ago.

I use traveler's checks as a backup when I go to europe, and yes, I've been able to cash them easily in France. But it doesn't really matter what others experience is in various countries, does it? I never go to Amex, either, don't see the point of that, and I do not get them euro, I also think that is a waste of money. I never use them in stores, either, I just exchange them at a bureau de change. So my experience is different, I only use them to get cash and don't get them in euro.

Your issue is really directly with AMEX, so talk to them about it. Either they allow that or they don't (for an Amex office to charge a fee), it's a management issue. I really don't think what other people experienced makes any difference to your complaint at all. If they aren't allowed to charge that fee, it's a customer complaint issue. If they are, what other people have experience elsewhere is completely irrelevant.

I personally think getting them in euro is a waste of time as you can easily exchange them in Europe if they are in USD (for example, whatever the native currency is). YOu pay less that way than the bad exchange rate you get when you buy them in euro. I advise this to anyone getting them, as if you don't use them, you just use them at home, easily. I also never advise anyone to use them for cash to pay for things in restuarants or stores, I would only advise they be used as a backup source of money in an emergency. They are just a backup for me in case my ATM card doesn't work or something. They are actually not that difficult to cash in France, and I get decent rates in Paris. They are difficult to cash in Poland and Czech Republic, increasingly. For example, I think in Krakow even banks wouldn't exchange them (not that I really cared, I was just noticing).

I found it very interesting that the newest edition of "Fodors-Paris" has an entire section devoted to TC's...NOTHING is said about their being antiquated, not really practical, etc., etc., which they have obviously become.

Think of the MANY people who travel and do NOT use this site....and yes there are a LOT of those people.....

oh, BTW, there are definitely places in the world where TCs are very easy to cash at good rates and are very useful. Mexico, for example. A lot of storeowners there accept them the same as USD cash, and like them.

IMHO it is no longer useful to criticize OP for an acknowledged error. OP now knows that travelers checks are obsolete, expensive to use, and difficult to cash. The real point is that the original contract with Amex did was for no cashing fee and one was charged. Amex should refund it.

Hi JG,

Unfortunately, you bought the TC's before reading up on the various ways to get a lot of Euros via ATMs as wll as what to do with CCs and ATM cards.

Chalk it up to experience.

Capital One and Schwab have CC and/or debit cards that do not have the 3% conversion fee.

((I))