Originally Posted by
Kremmen
Hostels.com engages in something very similar to DCC, except rather than switch to your card's currency, they switch arbitrarily to USD. (Which, for many people, will be the same thing. For many others, it will be even worse than DCC.)
Their main pages have a currency drop-down which allows you to choose many currencies. (However, they hide the fact that they only allow payment in three currencies.) So, you can look up a hostel to book in Australia, have it set to AUD and see this:
"12% Downpayment / Deposit: AU$53.28" next to the "Book now" button.
Clicking that button takes the user to the payment page, on which it is stated "12% Downpayment / Deposit: US$45.38"
This is, unsurprisingly (as hostels.com is run from Ireland, apparently a world leader in DCC), about 5% higher.
Hostelworld, which owns hostels.com, is one of the more bizarre and egregious there is. I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but if you choose to stay at a hostel outside of the three currencies they allow payment in, you will pay their lousy exchange rates on your deposit. It is NOT DCC, as they convert to one of three currencies you can choose from, not to the cardholder currency. Given many hostels book exclusively with them, you really just have no choice. I've chosen to consider it simply a hidden booking fee and, since it amounts to about 0.5% of the total stay, just deal with it. Obviously, if you're staying at a hostel in one of the currencies they allow payment in, use that currency.
Originally Posted by
Majuki
I'm glad you didn't get hit with DCC. It's difficult to prove that all Global Payments terminals have this ability, but what's the use if the cashiers don't know how to opt out?
That's EXACTLY the point. It's so they can say to Visa and Mastercard "LOOK, we're totally compliant, the customer ticks the box they want, and the merchant follows this long, convoluted process on each sales slip to honour the customer's decision - totally compliant" with them knowing full well merchants won't complete the process - simply having the process makes them compliant.