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Subject: Re: Buying gasoline in Italy Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:53:31 +0200

On Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:12:33 -0700, poldy wrote:

>In article <0001HW.C41C414C001B3CA3B01AD9AF@news.cable.ntlworld.com>,
>>
>> It happened to me more recently than that. 2 years ago in a small town in
>> France we were stuck overnight having got too low on petrol. We had cash and
>> several credit and debit cards from different banks. None of our cards worked
>> in any of the automatic pumps in the town. It was after 5.00 pm and none of
>> the pumps were manned, so we couldn't use cash either.

This is pretty common in France apart from the *really* big roads. You
should not expect to receive fuel during Sunday (sometimes even 24/7)
without a French "Carte Bleue".

>I thought that was an issue more for Americans, because our credit cards
>don't have the chips in them.

Even if the these machines in France that accept also non-French Maestro
cards seem to grow a slight bit more numerous recently, they usually
still don't accept "real" credit cards (nor - as opposed to Italy and
Switzerland - cash).

regards, Martin