nacho

I did,

I have not chosen a currency that is not used by Avis. From the beginning until I returned the car, all the documents I have with Avis are in USD. I was never given any choice of any currency nor Mr. Nacho has signed anything about any amount in SEK.

IAHtraveler

Moderator's Note: I have merged the DCC and Chargeback threads because they are all enclusive of the same topic.
Please send me a PM if you have any questions.

Cheers,
IAHtraveler

sdsearch

The problem is that may have been long ago. Are you not Avis Preferred? If you are, how often do actually sign anything? The typical Avis Preferred experience at (at least airport) rental facilities is either:

You see your name on the board along with the space number (or the shuttle driver tells you if on an Avis-specific shuttle bus), go directly to you car, drive off, hand drivers license to someone as you're driving out, but never sign anything.

or

If there is no board, you go to the counter, but your packet is already prepared, they ask for your ID, then hand you the packet and the keys. Again you don't sign anything.

In other words, with Avis Preferred the only signing that you typically do is at most on your first rental after joining the program. You do everything else either online (where you may click a check-box but don't actually sign) or maybe "implicitlty accept" by driving off without quesitoning the volume of junk you were handed in the packet.

(It's only the people who don't belong to Avis Preferred that have to sign on each individual rental.)

Now, ocvasionally at some random station, I may be given something to sign even as Avis Preferred or Avis First. But this is the rare exception, not the rule.

Often1

If you read Avis Preferred (or any car rental or hotel quick check-in) contract, you will see that when you sign up you affirm that by picking up the car, you are agreeing to the t&c then in effect (which are always available for review online and in hard copy at the counter). Few really sign a physical paper contract anymore (at most you are electronically signing a reader at the counter)

tatterdema

I just disputed the $5

nacho

Yes but then according to the T&C there is nothing saying that there is an automatic DCC when you pay for your rental.

I did go to the counter because Mr. Nacho's name wasn't there. We picked up the car basically the same as if we are not preferred except they didn't ask if we'd like to be billed in USD or SEK. Mr. Nacho signed something but he said he didn't signed anything regarding the DCC (in fact he never signs anything that is not in USD). Also this is our first rental - as a matter of fact they didn't even see Mr. Nacho's preferred card.

I can see there is a case here: I have signed and agreed the T&C for preferred, and there is NOTHING saying about automatic DCC. It's UNREASONABLE that Avis demand people to actively opt out in order not to be DCCed. Also I have never signed or be notified about this when I got the contract - everything I got was in USD. How on earth would one expect that we'll be billed in another currency?

Mr. Nacho rented once in Toulouse, and we used a Danish credit card. The worst is that we never ticked a box for DCC (he wasn't a preferred at that time, and we even had a copy of the contract). They charged us in Swedish krona , so first they DCCed me into SEK, then my CC converted the charges in DKK. I didn't call a chargeback last time because we got the fuel reimbursed twice, so we got what we should be compensated for.

Just because we live in Sweden, it doesn't mean that we only have Swedish cards. As a matter of fact, Mr. Nacho has similar amount of Danish/Swedish CCs.

It's not a big amount and it's time consuming but I do want to let Avis know that I'm not happy about this.

Often1

If it's a small amount, you will have a greater impact sending Avis a complaint on its customer service website and specifying that you are not looking for a refund. Will get this off your chest and it's possible that somebody at Avis will actually look at it. On the money side, it's just a small amount of money and nobody who matters will see it.

tatterdema

I have to disagree with this. In my case, the only way I was able to get it to anyone to actually look at it, was to dispute $5 of my charge. A charge back costs the company. The banks bill the company for a charge back, that they would not have had to pay if they had just refunded the $5. This tends to get upper managements attention, if they have too many charge backs.

nacho

+1

sdsearch

That's true, but the issue is, what if you've been Preferred for years, and yhou didn't archive the T&Cs from back then?

In my case, I've been Preferred for about a decade, and I have no clue what the T&Cs did or did say about payment currency back then.

There is no guarantee that the T&Cs online now are the T&Cs that were online at the time you signed up.

In my case, I've been Preferred so long, that it long predates foreign transaction fees. For at least several years after I joined Preferred, the only kind of foreign fees were foreign currency fees. DCC wasn't as "evil" back then as it is now, because it at least allowed you to earn points/miles on your card on Avis' converison fees, which you wouldn't if your points/miles-earning card was the one that added the foreign currency fee. It was only once foreign currency fees were replaced by foreign transaction fees that DCC became useless and "evil". By again, my Preferred T&C were from many years before that!

But in my case, being US-based, I was able to call up Avis and get the DCC removed (though it did take multiple calls and then some time, they did eventually do it). In the US, the department which did was not a department I could call directly (in the end, that department called me and left me a voicemail to let me know that they had made the change).

nacho

Do you have a phone number that I could call?

Thanks in advance!

I just posted on Avis FB page, at least I hope someone will read it.

sdsearch

There was no special phone number. I had to call regulard Avis Preferred customer service (that was listed on my card), explained that I wanted my Preferred account changed to always bill in local currency, and then they forwarded that request (not my call!) onto the approprirate department. Weeks later I got the voicemail that the change I'd requested had been done, but it didn't supply any "secret" callback number. It was quite a long time after that that I did my next international Avis rental, but then indeed it did bill me in local-enough currency.

(Please note that "local-enough" may not be totally local always. Some Euro-adjacent countries have car rental firms, hotels, etc, that bill in Euros, even though that country itself has not adopted the Euro. That was the case with Avis Hugary, as well at least one of the hotels I stayed at in the Budapest area. Hungary officilaly uses the forint, its own currency, not the Euro. But I'm based in the US, and I was not converted to USD, so I don't think of this as conventional DCC, and since this seems to be a local "tradition" in the travel industry in the Budapest area, I can't blame it on Avis specifically.)

nacho

I got a reply from Avis on FB:

At least they claim that they know that it's their problem - another support for my charge back if I have to. I'd love to sort it out with Avis, even though I have filled in all the charge back forms and have all the documents ready.

percysmith

You mentioned that Avis Sweden is referring to para 10. The para 10 Avis Sweden is referring to is the para 10 of the European version of the Avis Preferred agreement you quoted

http://www.avispreferred.com.au/Pref...ms.pdf#page=63

"10. You accepting these Terms and Conditions hereby constitutes authority for the relevant Avis Licensee to compute and debit the total charges under each Avis Preferred Rental Agreement against your account with the specified card issuing organisation, on completion of the rental. Any terms and conditions notified to you at the time of reservation relating to the payment method chosen by you for any rental will be incorporated into the terms and conditions of that Avis Preferred Rental Agreement. If you have chosen to pay in a currency other than that used by Avis or the Avis Licensee when the quote was prepared, the exchange rate used is based on the Citibank wholesale rate plus 4%, with this currency conversion service being provided by the Avis Licensee."


Para 10 does not authorise Avis to use DCC because it includes the wording "If you have chosen", and you have not, either in the Avis Preferred agreement or the actual rental agreement.

percysmith

However, looking through that PDF above, I see a term from the US agreement that Avis US somehow decided was applicable to you, maybe based on the fact your actual car rental is a US rental (despite your country of residence being Sweden):


http://www.avispreferred.com.au/Pref...ms.pdf#page=17

"[22]C. If you use a credit or charge card that is issued by a financial institution outside of the United States and your charges are billed to us in a currency other than U.S. Dollars, the full amount of your charge will be converted to the card account’s billing currency unless you submit a written request in advance to have the currency conversion performed by your card issuer. The conversion will be based on a conversion rate published by Reuters and will incorporate a processing charge no higher than 3% applied to all amounts relating to the transaction. This charge will replace the currency conversion processing charge applied by your card issuer. You understand that your card issuer has a currency conversion process; that you have chosen not to use your card issuer’s currency conversion process; and that you will have no recourse against your card issuer with respect to any matter related to the currency conversion or disclosure thereof."


Even if it is applicable, I do not think 22C meets Visa's requirements:

http://corporate.visa.com/_media/vis...s.pdf#page=553

"Dynamic Currency Conversion Priority Check-Out and Express Return Requirements (Updated)

Before initiating Dynamic Currency Conversion for a Priority Check-out Transaction or an express return car rental Transaction, the Merchant must complete a written agreement with the Cardholder that specifies:
...
• Effective 1 October 2010, Cardholder expressly agrees to DCC by marking an "accept" box on the written agreement"

22C requires an opt-out action which is not compliant with the Visa International Operating Rules and can be charged back against; it is Avis US's responsibility to obtain your opt-in consent before they can apply DCC on your US rental.

I would submit the chargeback form to your Swedish bank, citing Reason Code 76, quoting the above page of the VIOR and claiming Avis relies on both para 10 of the European agreement and para 22C of the US agreement, but neither meets VIOR's requirements which are applicable globally.