Wirelessly posted (Palm850/V0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11))

(Taiwan trip cont'd) After a few days on a local tour (read: minimal card spending to do) we ended up back in TPE early last evening and started to hit the clubbing spots. Being low on cash, I took my Shacom MC to charge as much as I can.

The first spot we hit were Spark 101. Chinatrust NTD txn no problems there.

The next spot was a bit of a shock - in house DCCed me. On being presented with the slip, with the hostess again already holding the customer copy, I walked the hostess back, forked over cash and demanded the transaction be reversed. The cashier presented me with another DCC slip to sign and I launched into a Mandarin tirade about how HKD is still there and she didn't fix anything. It turns out she merely wanted my signature on her (merchant) copy of the reversal slip - I don't know why that's necessary but I didn't see any problems signing for something that will give me money (I didn't sign the original DCC slip), so OK.

Room 18 was cover charge at the door so no help there (the day will come where clubs will take miles-earning Visa Paywave cards, but meanwhile cash is still king in tight spots).

On my suggestion (given Living Room is one of our favourite drinking places in HK), we headed to W Taipei's WOObar. The sitting cages rock (literally) but being a hotel we naturally got DCCed.

I made the point of specifically asking for NTD in advance to no avail...Girlfriend was getting used to seeing me wave my arms and demand DCC reversals at this stage and thank goodness the server served the DCC charge and reversal slips on a plate.

I love the fact Taiwan card slips almost always identify the acquirer, unlike the anonymous cowards that most HK acquirers are. W Taipei WOObar is a Global Payments merchant like the Chinatrust hotel (logos on back of slip). in house's slips were marked with "TS" characters on the back. My first guess is Taishin Bank http://wapedia.mobi/en/List_of_banks_in_Taiwan but I have a bona fide Taishin Bank card slip and it looks nothing like the in house slip (not to mention DCC was not applied). The first four digits of in house's merchant and terminal IDs match those of WOObar and the Chinatrust hotel, and the font and wording is similar, so I concluded the acquirer is Global Payments again but printed on anonymous coward paper.