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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (374460)	3/18/2008 11:45:45 AM
From: Taro	Respond to of 1574051

The use of credit cards say 10 years ago or so wasn't that common in Germany. That has changed a lot since then and really took off when finally the big petrol companies started accepting plastic at the fuel stations just around that time or slightly after that. Still, however, some large stores refuse to take credit cards. Unless that changed recently, the two leading sports goods stores in Munich, Sport Scheck and Schuster still don't accept cc. In Italy as usual things have their own local flavor. Dining at a ristorante and asking for the check after 9pm or so, quite often you can expect to be told, that "sfortunatemente la machinetta non funziona" which means that their credit card machine allegedly broke down. The real story behind this being, that they have now done enough taxable business for the day and want the rest paid in cash "in nero" or "black" and thus bypassing the taxation system ;) Taro