Chile Forum

Still had a problem at the Lider today. I thought I would try it again to see and still a no go.

Had the retry problem yesterday when I tried the card in two stores. One store was okay a week or so ago. No sure what's up.

mlight, are all the problems with American Express or have you tried others as well?

It has been with AmEx. I haven't tried my Visa card yet. But the strange thing was that it was okay early last week.

Tried calling Amex yet?

passport wrote:Tried calling Amex yet?

No I haven't because it didn't say denied, just to re try. I might call them if it keeps happening.

There is another problem forming this year, that we have not seen before, but are finding to be widespread among smaller businesses. They are simply not accepting credit cards anymore, because the credit card processor red bank has increased the fees they charge but also are increasing the time they have to wait to get paid. It use to be like 30 days, but some of the small tourism biz owners we have talked to in the south have said it is now sometimes exceeding two months. Can you imagine a biz with say less than a 30% profit margin waiting two months to get their money back?

So, a lot this year are simply refusing to accept credit cards, either Chilean or otherwise. That is coupled with red banks new limit of 200,000 pesos per withdrawal, so they can slap foreigners with the fat bank fees over and over again.

Luckily my favorite sushi joint in Puerto Varas has solved that by offering a big discount to anyone that pays cash. Like 25% or more. I can have my sushi and thumb my nose at the credit card processor.

I think Transbank have changed the way the transactions are verified. I have been seeing this quite often recently, with both foreign and national cards.
Got a feeling its due to more stringent anti-fraud checking. Same goes for foreign card payment delays And Transbank recently put out a circular warning businesses that if they accept payments made using stolen ccs, they will be required to reimburse the cardholder.

As for payment delays, I never have to wait more than 3 days to see a cc payment credited to my bank account, that's in CLP on local cards anyway.