Diners Club Club Rewards - Bad exchange rate on Diners

Recently, I got myself a Diners Card in Europe. I liked it because it is free, has insurance and gets me into airport lounges. I do also have a Visa card without insurance, but I moved all payments i could make with DC over to DC.

Then I went on a ten day trip to the US. Now I've received my bill. It turns out that the DC exchange rate of Euro vs USD is much worse than on Visa. For billing items from the same calender day (Sept 11th) the difference is 1,6%! So DC charges me 1,6% more for every USD than Visa. Haying spent a four digit Euro sum this makes quite an impact.

In the future I will not use my Diners Card outside the Euro zone any more, unless I really need the insurance feature.

I do collect points with my DC, but I can not change them into airline miles. This is only for "Gold" customers.

Since the beginning of November credit card companies in Austria have to publish their exchange rates on a daily basis. Now I can compare easily and I see that the Diners exchange rate (issuer = AirPlus) is always worse than the Visa exchange rate (issuer = Paylife).

Now I would like to know if this is an issuer specific issue or a credit card brand thing.

Now I would like to know if this is an issuer specific issue or a credit card brand thing.

I guess it's a brand thing (in europe) because the situation is just as bad in Finland.

I've now figured that it is not only a worse exchange rate, but there's also a higher markup: Because I own a co-branded Diners Club card (cooperation with a wine dealer) they charge me a 1,5% fee on any foreign currency purchase instead of 1%. I'll really stick to my VISA card - but even there you have to beware. My girlfriend has a VISA card from a different issuer here in Austria and her exchange rates are much worse than mine. You really have to check these things thoroughly.