American Express Travellers Cheque Card Review

Overall Rating

Customer Service.

Free 30 Euro's Signing-up offer proved problematic.
Most foreign cashpoints only let you withdraw in denominations of 20 or 50 Euro.
Can't check your balance.
You get charged per withdrawal.
Money left over on card difficult to retrieve.

I got sweet-talked into signing-up for the American Express Travellers Cheque Card by a girl behind the till when I was changing my currency at Thomsons. I was going to exchange my Sterling for Euro's in a straight cash transaction until the girl told me of a special deal they had going on the AMEX Travellers Cheque Card.

I was told that I could sign-up for this card, the card was free and that I would have an extra 30E added to the card once I had completed the sign-up procedure. Great, or so I thought, 30E for doing diddly squat plus I would get the peace of mind and security of a travellers cheque without the hassle of changing them over or getting shafted on the exchange rate.

The sign-up process, despite taking an eternity in the travel agents, is pretty painless. Once you have sorted out the details with the travel agent you then simply have to call the AMEX hotline to register the card, this only takes a few miuntes and a simpleton could do it with ease.

The problems began for me when I touched down on foreign soil. The immediate problem I discovered with this card is that you can't check your balance - so you have to take it in good faith that the correct amount has been attributed to the card and that the 30 free Euro's have been added as well. It may also pose a problem for people who lose track of how how much they withdraw whilst holidaying as they have no way of going back to check their ongoing balance.

I was also told by the travel agent that I would be charged 1 Euro per withdrawal, obviously if you want to withdraw small amounts over a 2 week period then this could soon tot up. A friend who also has this card was told he would be charged 1.50 Euro per transaction so there also appears to be something of the unknown about this. As you can't check your balance there is also no simple way of finding out which figure is accurate.

Another achilles heel of the card, as with foreign cashpoints in general, is that you can only withdraw in denominations of 10 and 20 Euro's. This led to a further problem down the line which I will address now. The free 30E I was promised was never added to my account by AMEX which meant I suffered on my final withdrawals. Believing the 30E bonus had been credited I went to withdraw 180 Euro and I couldn't do this as they hadn't credited me with my promised 30E. As a result I could only withdraw 150E.

In fairness to Amex they rectified this as soon as I rang them and added 30E to my account within the hour. However, because I withdrew the previous 150E, I could only get 20E of this as the cashpoints would not accomodate a withdrawal for a 10E note.

Sadly that left me with over 10E in my account that I couldn't spend as the Spanish shopkeepers would not accept payment on an AMEX Travellers Cheque Card. I now have little idea of how to obtain this extra 10E as these cards do not work in UK cashpoints.

Overall the prospect of a free 30E bonus is not as good as it first sounds - this is because you must write off 10E straight away because of the charges for using the card and then you must undergo the hassle of trying to get them to credit you with the aforementioned bonus payment. As you can imagine, the last thing I want to do whilst on my holiday is to ring a call centre from a payphone to try and find out what has happened to my money.

Despite the good customer service from AMEX, the negatives far outweigh the positives and as a result I can't recommend this card - I certainly wouldn't use it again based on my own poor experience. I would advise you to play it safe with regular travellers cheques or do what I usually do and take the money in cash.

If anyone knows how I can get my paws on the remaining 10 or so Euro's left on the card please leave a comment with the info!