Originally Posted by
Sjoerd
What would you do in the following case?
When I checked in at the Sukhothai Hotel, Bangkok, they swiped my credit card "just for guarantee". I didn't sign or press any buttons. When I checked out 3 days later, I expected to have to pay but they told me my card had already been charged. They gave me a hotel invoice (in THB), but no credit card receipt at all.
Sure enough, when I received my credit card statement yesterday they had charged me in the currency of my Visa card. The rate seems to be about 2% worse than other THB transactions around the same date.
What would you do in this case?
Just to let you all know what happened in this case:
I complained to the merchant (Sukhothai Hotel, Bangkok) and to the bank of my credit card in Singapore.
Sukhothai Hotel told me that "they were not aware" that I had been charged in SGD but offered to refund the amount.
Turns out the bank in Singapore is adding 0.8% service fee to the DCC amount!!
In the end Sukhothai Hotel refunded the amount in SGD and the bank refunded the 0.8% service fee.
I told Sukhothai to charge me the THB amount at the exchange rate of the date of the transaction which they told me they couldn't do and then they asked how much I was willing to pay in SGD. I took the mid rate (interbank) for the transaction date and converted to SGD - this was the amount Sukhothai charged me.
In the end the total amount I paid was more than SGD 40 lower than originally charged. (which was about 7% of the amount)
In the process I exchanged 6 emails with the hotel and 3 with the bank, a lot of work for them so I hope they learned a lesson........