Leonora

Do most restaurants take credit cards in PV? Does anyone know if the marriot has an ATM?

suze

There are quite a few of the smaller restaurants downtown that do not accept credit cards.

The larger, more expensive, and/or tourist oriented ones usually do.

tom42

I can tell you of one that does not take credit cards for sure - Barcelona Tapas. Luckily we had enough money between the two of us to pay the bill (and still enough for a taxi back to the hotel). Other restaurants that we ate at in PV did take credit cards. I would recommend having enough cash on hand or confirming with the restaurant beforehand.

suze

In the Old Town especially I make sure to have cash to pay for meals. I've even had the experience where a restaurant accepted credit cards, then literally three days later they did not (something about "the bank&quot.

Often ones that do not have a sign posted clearly saying they are not accepted.

Stewbear

I always remember when Lola Bravo first opened up the Red Cabbage. A gal (a stranger to Lola) came in with her pre teen daughter & did not have enough cash to pay her tab. Lola assured her "no Problem just stop in tomorrow after you have been to the bank". Nice person that Lola!

blondlady

Many take credit cards. It's a hit/miss. BUT, my bank recommends not using the credit card in restaurants UNLESS you take the card personally up to the cashier and sign and retrieve it. We go frequently to Mexico and have become accustomed to paying USD or Pesos. The stealing of credit card numbers in Mexico is rampant. The fraud department in our bank told us this. Also, we call our bank (fraud department) ahead of our trip and alert them the dates we will be in a foreign country.

Ryberg

Well this myth has become so rooted as conventional "wisdom" that it certainly dies hard!

You may want to advise your bank to undertake a reality check before advising you or their other customers with information contrary to the facts, as credit card fraud is actually MUCH lower in Mexico than in the States (or even in Canada). Like 1000 times lower as compared to the U.S. You could look it up.

But as I say, this myth just has a real life of its own, unfortunately, and continues to mar the image of this country and travel to it, despite the facts...

Steve

blondlady

Our credit card was stolen last November. That is when the bank (Capitol One) told us about the problems. We have had other friends say they take the credit card to the cashier. Not all restaurants, of course. But you never know. My friends purse was stolen last week while she was dining at Langostinos. Sorry, but I do not pass "Myths" at random. It is best to be careful. I do not discourage trips to PV or Mexico. But it is wise to be careful of your credit card WHEREVER! I doubt this message mars Mexico and does not discourage anyone from traveling to PV. Get a life, people have to be reasonably careful. PV is growing and with it comes the problems associated with growth.

Ryberg

I'm also careful not to pass along myths. Of course, I would never say that what happened to you or a friend was a myth. The myth part is what your bank's fraud departument passed along to you; as you put it: "The stealing of credit card numbers in Mexico is rampant."

I dug up an old post of mine with a link that provides the numbers on this point. Probably it's gotten worse since then, as that was a little while ago, but then probably fraud has gotten worse at more or less the same rates in the States, as well, which means that while the incidence may be higher, the percentages would be roughly the same in comparison to each other, and thus it would continue to be a myth that fraud is rampant in Mexico.

Note that the link is not from, say, a Mexican tourism board, but rather from a Canadian business research source.

"Mexico has the lowest MasterCard fraud average in the Latin American region, 0.05%."??"In comparison to the fraud rates in the US and Canada, Mexico's fraud rate is MUCH LOWER [my emphasis]. The US fraud rate is 1% of credit card sales, followed by Canada with 0.02%, and finally Mexico with less than 0.001% of total credit card sales."??(So again if you do the math on that one, you say what I was saying: 1,000 times the incidence of fraud in the U.S. as in Mexico.)??"Fraud in Mexico City is down by 60% since the new [anti-fraud] legislation in 1999."??And according to the table on that page, over 1/3 of credit card fraud in the nation takes place in Mexico City, while only 6% takes place in Quintana Roo.??from Strategis report "Credit Card Industry in Mexico" at?http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/inter....html??Steve??

Ryberg

Sorry. Looks like some sort of formatting code got pasted in there instead of a better looking format. Let me try the paste again and edit it properly. This time I'll make sure to preview the post first to make sure!

Steve

"Mexico has the lowest MasterCard fraud average in the Latin American region, 0.05%."

"In comparison to the fraud rates in the US and Canada, Mexico's fraud rate is MUCH LOWER [my emphasis]. The US fraud rate is 1% of credit card sales, followed by Canada with 0.02%, and finally Mexico with less than 0.001% of total credit card sales."

(So again if you do the math on that one, you say what I was saying: 1,000 times the incidence of fraud in the U.S. as in Mexico.)

"Fraud in Mexico City is down by 60% since the new [anti-fraud] legislation in 1999."

And according to the table on that page, over 1/3 of credit card fraud in the nation takes place in Mexico City, while only 6% takes place in Quintana Roo.

from Strategis report "Credit Card Industry in Mexico" at
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/inter...gr105995e.html

suze

Back to the original question though, many of the local restaurants do not accept credit cards, so it doesn't really matter all the rest!

And unfortunately I have begun to hear more and more (both on forums and while talking to visitors in PV) about people having things stolen... only in the past year or two, which you never heard of in PV 10 years ago. So times (unfortunately) are changing.

Ryberg

I'm sure it must be increasing everywhere, both because credit card use in general is on the rise and because crime involving it probably is, as well.

However I think this subject may share the same kind of... well a kind of myopia, I guess, that can tend to arise with respect to crime in travel settings, as well. Think of the cruise ship stories or the Barcelo story in this region recently or Natalee Holloway: in any of those cases, chances are excellent that the rate of crime -- even serious, violent crime -- is significantly higher in the very home towns of the people who are so worried about what might happen to them while on vacation in such a setting. And yet they're not proportionately extremely worried about it more or less constantly during their daily routines and letting it affect how they run their lives.

Then you add to that the general tendency to give more weight to anecdotal evidence -- what happened to you once before, or what a friend reported -- than to the overall picture, all the data and statistical analyses, and you get people more worried about things like credit card fraud here than at the corner pharmacy or from Amazon online or whatever.

I bet you'll find that if you look at the data available online showing the whole picture about crime in various locations, you'll see you're probably much safer in many places on vacation than you are at home. (Indeed several such links were posted in such discussions after that incident in this region some months ago, showing markedly higher rates even in seemingly tranquil Toronto, the home of the victims, than in this region.) So this would be just as links like the one I posted show much higher rates of credit card fraud in the U.S. and Canada than in Mexico (even if it's on the rise everywhere). Yet the belief that the reverse is true continues and is even (as in this case) said to come from bank fraud authorities themselves...

Well anyway it's there for what it may be worth to look at!

Steve

suze

Steve, Leonora asked a very specific question about ability to use credit cards in PV restaurants.

Also perhaps not relevant to her question is my observation that petty crime is unfortunately on the rise in PV recently from a decade ago. Yes it's "anecdotal" i.e., people told me there wallets were stolen(!) where for YEARS in the past I had never heard of a single problem.

Ryberg

Sorry if I said something out of place. I'm aware that the original post/question was different. I was hoping it wouldn't take the turn toward the myth I was referring to, but it did, so I was just trying to pick up from your comments and continue along those lines with further thoughts on that. Wasn't trying to cause a problem or anything...

In fact I forgot to mention that I'm surprised to hear people reporting low incidence of credit cards being accepted in PV, still. I would have guessed it would be on the increase there even more than elsewhere, since it's a tourist center...

THe anecdotal thing is hard partly because there are always contrary anecdotes, I think. For example, I've lived here in the Yucatan peninsula for about 6 years now and used a variety of cards at a variety of places, but never had a fraud incident during all that time. However I have been the victims of credit card fraud on 2-3 different occasions in the States and even once while living in super-safe Japan, where cash is most definitely, absolutely king, and credit card use is still rare.

For me that's why I tend to mistrust anecdotes in terms of their ability to paint the overall picture and go with broad stats instead, where available.

Steve

suze

Steve- I'm guessing you haven't visited Puerto Vallarta recently or at least not in the "Old Town" and El Centro areas? Please take my word for it a lot of the smaller local restaurants don't accept charge cards. This is not an "anecdote" I was there last month.

Ryberg

Wow, we continue to miscommunicate!

I never said that your take on that was anecdotal and maybe not to be trusted! Just my own surprise at hearing it, that's all.

My reference to not trusting anecdotal evidence was with respect to the tangential issue later brought up of the degree to which credit card fraud was a problem in Mexico as opposed to in the U.S.

Thus I presented my own anecdotal experience of that latter point -- 6 years here and no fraud, while nevertheless experiencing it in the U.S. and Japan -- but did not present any such anecdote regarding acceptance of credit cards in PV (where you're right, I haven't been).

I think it's all good, we're just in need of some fine tuning on the wavelength, here!

Steve

blondlady

WARNING NOT A MYTH. I just got off the phone with my friend who was in PV July 4- 11th. Her bank just called her and said someone started using her CREDIT CARD August 1st - 3rd so far. My friend used her card - in only 3 places, once to buy a dress, once at a jewelry store and once at the tequila factory in Old town. Debit cards nowadays can be used as debit or credit. Someone evidently wrote down her number, then had a card made and used it as a credit card. We assume they took it to Guadalajara to do this because some of the charges are there as well as PV. Don't stop going, just BE ALERT, BE CAREFUL. I can only emphasize that I do not recommend using your credit card. Sorry Steve, but I would rather be careful than sorry. This can happen anywhere.

tokmik

One time I remember them saying the phone line was down and they couldn't process our card...now it all makes sense..Luckily we had some money on us. Will be prepared this time for sure... www.merchantaccountsllc.com

suze

This post is 3 years old.