Diners Club Club Rewards - Using DC in the UK - A disappointment

Just came back from several days in Frankfurt and London. In Frankfurt, DC was accepted everywhere, and I never got the look of confusion/amusement I often get from merchants when presenting the card. Restaurants, shops, museums, all took the card without a problem.

A few times when I asked a Frankfurt merchant, "Do you take Diners Club," the response was, "Of course, why wouldn't we take it?" Well, how refreshing is that?

Contrast that with London, where it has been months, and the London Underground still won't accept DC, even though the DE payment option is hard-coded on its ticket machines.

And several high street stores seemed to have stopped taking DC since my last visit about 6 months ago.

And the duty free stores at Heathrow, World Duty Free (part of BAA), stopped accepting DC about a month ago. How incredibly frustrating. It says it was done as a business decision, and its "need to increase credit card security technology."

It makes me wonder what is happening to the DC sales effort to acquire new merchants and maintain current ones. Perhaps with the new MasterCard alliance, DC is focusing its sales efforts on corporate card adoption, and not on increasing merchant acceptance.

I think the only places that accept DC in the UK at the moment are posh hotels, some posh shops and Marks and Spencers! I'm the only person I know of who has one of these cards (and that is only because the lounge access programme fills a couple of Priority Pass holes).

I think the only places that accept DC in the UK at the moment are posh hotels, some posh shops and Marks and Spencers! I'm the only person I know of who has one of these cards (and that is only because the lounge access programme fills a couple of Priority Pass holes).

Well railway stations accept Diners for tickets, but yes, in general DC is about as good as JCB.

And on what Kixo wrote: "It says it was done as a business decision, and its "need to increase credit card security technology" - welcome to the most irritating new trend, where anything can be justified if you use "security" anywhere in the sentence.

"Waiter, there is a fly in my soup." "We have to add it for security reasons."
"I don't think you gave me correct change." "Giving more than three coins in change to a customer has been temporarily suspended to improve customer service and also for security reasons."

If you think I'm exagerrating, listen to this. The other day, I was at Selfridges (400 Oxford Street, London), and in the basement they have Sienna, an Italian cafe. I bought an espresso and I was drinking it, standing up at the bar.

I was told to sit down, because customers are requested to sit down for security reasons. I called the manager. She explained to me, very politely, that the bar server was not entirely correct. This was because their licence only covered the bar area. I pointed out that I was in the bar area. I was standing at the bar. "Oh," she said. "You see, we ask customers to sit down for security reasons."

And you want to pay by DC...