haha. Yeah its the exact opposite in Europe. Everyone accepts Visa & Mastercard but Amex is hit & miss like 50/50. And it mostly comes down to trying because the clerks don't even know if the PoS machine accepts it.
Much rarer now that Costco is switching to Visa.
Since my dad mostly has high volume purchase (and only one or two a day) the 1.5% can mean a lot. He also says doing business with AMEX is hard (if there was an error) because he gets ridiculously few purchase and they don't consider him valuable enough. And everybody who has a AMEX CC in Europa has a Visa or master card as well.
That does seem to be true mostly. Shop near has the opposite though - Amex card use is free but for Visa & Mastercard there is a surcharge. Thought that was a bit weird.