Originally Posted by
morelegroom
This is such a good thread I thought I would add my 2 cents. They tried this scam on me at a Cologne Hotel. the new "wrinkle" was that I had booked the hotel through Booking.com and had agreed that they could charge my credit card card on booking. Card is capital 1 so I pay no Foreign exchange fees. When they presented the receipt in the morning it had DCC with the usual rip off rate. I got all the standard lies . "The bank makes us do it", "it's not us it's the bank" "It's the standard exchange rate" etc etc etc. I do have some advantages. I speak German and I've taught law and technology in Germany and the USA. My German lawyer lives only a few miles away. After listening to Hotelier crap for 10 minutes I suggested calling the criminal police and making it a police matter. They quickly refunded the charge and I paid cash. I have had 10 emails exchanged with Booking.com asking why they do not prohibit their contract partners from making these totally unauthorized transactions. They have yet to give a satisfactory answer.
I urge everyone to fight this scam/fraud with every tool at your disposal. You will help every traveler
But you see, they won anyway when you paid cash (even if you withdrew the cash from an ATM and paid no fees and your bank doesn't add any foreign exchange fees or passes along the 1% mc/visa fee). Here's what I do in this situation. If I can't get them to void the transaction and do it properlyh in local currency, I circle the foreign currency amount on the charge slip, cross out the disclaimer about accepting the exchange rate as final and write local currency not offered.....and tell them in no uncertain terms I will be disputing the charge if it comes through as a dcc charge. Usually that does the trick.
I think I related here in this thread although I don't want to go back through it that I had this scam attempted on me about 3 times thiks past summer in Ireland. In each case, they relented as soon as I brought it up. The only time they didn't relent was at Burger King in Dublin with the usual lies. I finally did what I said above and when I got home, I submitted a dispute. I wanted to really dig the knife into them, have the charge returned to them (it was a Schwab investors reward card, no foreign transaction fee in any event).....the difference on a charge of €7 was about 45¢ US (I submitted the dispute by fax which I don't pay for rather than snail mail which would have cost me the diffeence anyway; after all it's the principale of the matter). Boy was I disappointed when I heard back from FIA that in the interest of good customer relations, they were refunding the 45¢ and not charging the transaction back. Damn; I really wanted to teach those thieves a lesson.