American Express Membership Rewards - American Express Charges in Jamaica

Is it un-usual that merchants in Jamaica manually convert charges from JMD$ to USD$ and then process the transaction is USD$?

In other countries I have been to, the merchant will process in the local currency and then Amex will convert (albeit at a fee) to the Amex's card currency.

The issue I have here is that USD$1 ~ JMD$59, however some merchants use an exchange rate of USD$1 = JMD$52, others use USD$1 = JMD$55 etc.. In other words, merchants use any exchange rate they feel like using. If you are using a CAD$ issued Amex (like I am) then, with all the conversion fees, it works out significantly cheaper to buy goods and services in the local JMD$ currency.

Does this happen in other countries where the merchant will manually convert Amex charges to USD$ before processing?

How would they know if a card is foreign or local? If they convert all transactions, the local cards will be charged in US$ too. They must have a way to distinguish... but it would be hard since there are tens of thousands of bank card issuers.

Local JMD$ cards (Visa/ MC) are clearly marked "valid in Jamaica only."

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Flyaway:
Does this happen in other countries where the merchant will manually convert Amex charges to USD$ before processing? </font>

Yes, it happens in countries where Amex doesn't process payments in the local currency for some reasons (currency with high inflation rates, or not freely convertible, etc.).

I rented a car a few days ago in Bucharest (Romania), and the Lei-amount was converted to US$, and I signed the Amex receipt in US$.

The exchange rate was fair, and both Lei/US$ and Lei/EUR exchange rates were shown on the invoice.

I has always been like that in Jamaica as far as i can remember ( 25 years???).

One thing you have to be careful of too was that the local Avis franchise, not once but twice tried to slip double charges in my Amex account since Jamaica uses the European system of dates.
Eg: say the original date of your rental was May 10, 2003 listed as 10/5/2003 on the credit card slip (using the European dates) another charge just "miraculously" appeared on Amex on 10/05/03 and was again apppoved by Amex.
I went back and checked previous bills and found it happened exactly like that once before.
Amex reversed the charges without comment.
mike