We recently booked our February trip (vacations from school for all of us) at the travel agency--7 days in Antalya, Turkey. When Frau Fiebrisch was finally finished typing in all of our details, she gave me the final price. I took out our Visa card and handed it to her. She looked at the card, then looked up at me, and I just knew there was an issue."We don't accept credit cards, only cash."
When booking a family weekend for March, the answer was the same. Luckily, we've saved for vacations this year, so it's not much of an issue.
I think if an established business in the U.S. tells us that they can't take credit cards, we wonder right away if they're legit. At least in Germany and Europe, taking cash only is still quite common.
Now when people say "only cash," they're not assuming that you're willing to carry hundreds or thousands of Euros on your person. Debit cards are the rage here. Regardless, one thing is for certain: you need to actually have the money in order to buy many things. Not really a bad way to go when you think about it.
I've seen a couple of articles in the paper in Salzburg about people getting into credit card debt troubles, but compared to what we read about in the States, it's almost laughable. In Austria, if you're carrying $2,500 in debt, you're considered to be on the brink of financial collapse.
Salzburg is actually not the norm when it comes to credit card acceptance. Most restaurants here do take cards but it's mostly because of the number of tourists that come through the city. In a city like Regensburg in Southern Germany, for example, you can really be hard pressed to use plastic.
Perhaps they have something here, though. It's not a bad idea to save up for something like a vacation. I used to read Mutual Funds Magazine. They always published financial advice, and when they'd run out of things to say, it seems like they always returned to the axiom, "Never borrow to take a vacation, save up for it instead."
Companies here who don't take cards will tell you why they don't take cards. It's not because they want us to be better with our money. It's because they don't want to pay the credit card companies up to 6% in fees for allowing you to use a card.
When you think about it, not using credit cards can only mean more money for us, the consumer. First, we don't have to pay finance charges for carrying a balance on the card. Second, business may not feel the need to raise prices to compensate for the 6% in credit card charges. Third, if it's a vacation you're talking about, what better feeling is there than coming back from a vacation not worrying about how you're going to now pay for it. At what point, in the USA, did we lose sight of that concept?
