> Actually I wasn't surprised about the credit card
>part, just the debit card. I can't imagine any
>halfway-decent-sized shop or company which doesn't
>accept debit cards. Plenty of places here don't
>accept credit cards or cheques, but if they accept
>cash, they accept a debit card.

To me, that's kind of odd to hear, since it's a rare place that takes straight debit cards from my experience. I have this silly little hybrid called a "Visa check card" which is basically my debit card with a Visa logo. This is so I can use it like a credit-card. "Good wherever Visa is accepted" is the selling point. It *is* a selling point, because not a lot of places here take just a debit card as payment--or didn't anyway, when these things first became popular; I see many more places that take them now. Because of this, I often have a choice now when I go places about whether I want to pay by "credit" or by "debit" even though it's the same exact card. I haven't figured out what the difference is yet, since both deduct money straight from my account. I have a feeling that if I go credit I'd be allowed to overdraw my account that way, and incur fees (which the banks love) whereas if I go debit, I can't spend more than I have in the account. But I don't really know that for sure, since I've had my card denied several places, both when I knew there was plenty of money in the account to cover it and when I really was overdrawn.

However, now that I think about it I guess most places around here take debit cards. But that wasn't the way I remember it back in NH. Also, we didn't even CALL them "debit" cards until just recently anwyay. We called them "ATM cards" because that's what you did with them--went to the ATM and got money. You didn't buy stuff directly with them, hense they weren't really "debit" cards at all.

That's how I recall it, anyway.

-- Dave