USVI-On-Line

I have a dumb question, but why don't the villa agencies accept credit cards? It won't be a big deal this next time (yes, we already purchased tickets for next year - woo hoo! I need a new ticker!) as I'll have plenty of time to send a check, however this last time it was a bit of a pain because we arrived within 30 days of stay. Just curious.

For most its probably the fee they pay. I can say Destination St. John does take Visa/MC. Sadly, they don't take AmEx so I can't rack up the points!

We talked our place in STT into setting up a paypal account just for us.

We used DSJ, and they not only take credit cards but will automatically debit your card on your due date for you. (That kind of scared me, because I never have a spare two grand in my account for such occasions!)

I am seeing more and more place taking credit cards, but I wrote two checks to DSJ, and had no problem. There's no way I'd take gobs of cash with me to pay for my house. I'd be terrified I'd get mugged.

One way I got around the "no Amex" issue is to use the "checks" that we occasionally get from the CC co's. I double check to make sure that there are no fees or crazy interest just in case but then I pay with those. That way the villa co sees it as a check and I get the convenience of using the CC. AGAIN you have to read the fine print. In our case we have excellent credit and have really good CC's (Amex platinum, Amex Blue and a Visa and MC).

We usually like to rack up the amex points to use for long haul travel-- just purchased our third round of Upper class tix on Virgin Atlantic for the first leg of our trip to Prague next July. I just love getting $16,000 tickets (approx $8,000 each) for free!

So that's one way to do it! But honestly i would NEVER pay cash for a villa and would worry about any co. that wants you to, because then you have no recourse if there's a problem.

You could also offer to pay the service charge that the CC co charges if you want to use that CC. That's another way to do it.