Originally Posted by percysmith
I just blew up like Fukushima Daiichi Plant One at this point. I demanded to see the card terminal to have this voided. The waiter and Oreck followed me reluctantly.
I can picture you doing this.
It's similar to my behavior at Hong Kong Disneyland, but at least there the girl said, "Here.. I pushed this button. Here is the Hong Kong Dollar receipt." She handed me the thermal paper receipt which did show HKD.
I think the response to the "tick [ ]XXX and it's XXX" should now be a request for a courtesy copy/reprint of the receipt. It's like your case in the Maldives or my case at Chung Yo Department Store in Taichung (after I dragged my wife and the sales assistant to the cashier). Just having the box ticked on the carbon copy receipt without any other reassurance makes me nervous. Fortunately in HK at least the carbon copy receipts present a solid case for a chargeback provided that the issuer will follow through with the chargeback.
It's good that Rainbow honors currency selections, but I feel like this is far from the norm, and far more cases are like Greyhound Cafe than Rainbow.
Originally Posted by percysmith
I should note Oreck's position on this - he understands there may be some scalping involved, but he does not want to take issue with it. I respect that, it's his financial prerogative, and I admit to somewhat hijacking his transaction to pursue my own research for this thread.
I'm happy that Oreck allowed you to take control of the transaction, but it does bother me when people who know they're being taken for a ride don't object. I equate it to the Chinese tea ceremony scam where some even try to justify it after the fact. "Well, I had a nice time, and I even got some tea out of it." With DCC there are four groups of people: Militantly Anti-DCC, Passive Anti-DCC, Ignorant about DCC, and Pro-DCC.
You and I fall into the Militantly Anti-DCC category. We try to educate as many people and merchants as possible about avoiding DCC. We will make a scene at merchants for even attempting DCC and escalate as need be, involving managers, voiding transactions, fiddling with the terminal, calling the acquirer, etc. If all else fails, we follow through with a chargeback via our issuer.
The Passive Anti-DCC people are the most frustrating. Those are the types who are with us in spirit - they agree that DCC is a ripoff - but they don't want to make a fuss over things. They opt out of DCC wherever possible, but just accept it whenever they get struck with it even knowing that they're getting a marked up price.
I would say the largest category is those who are ignorant. These people can even be persuaded by merchants to accept DCC. However, most of the time there is no need. They passively accept DCC by not ticking the box or knowing that they have to opt out. I'm sure many in this category would be upset after getting educated about DCC, but the trouble is educating enough of them to reach critical mass. Right now merchants can argue, "See... a large percentage of people accept DCC, so it's a service our customers value." However, silence these days does not mean consent. If each customer had all of the objective facts and then made a clear and conscious choice, I think DCC acceptance rates would be a fraction of what they are today.
Finally, there is the Pro-DCC camp. Now, these people aren't necessarily in favor of DCC. Actually, I think they could be ardent opponents of DCC if you could communicate it clearly. But these are the types who make the comments "Why can't they show the price in real money?" "How much is this in real money?! I don't know how much this is." "Oh, you can accept USD? Now here's a merchant who understands the value of the dollar!" (...and how to profit off of a customer of this type.
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