Originally Posted by
Kremmen
There are still financial institutions in some countries which only apply FTFs to transactions in foreign currencies. If your DCC surcharge is 3% and your own bank's surcharge is 3% and they don't add theirs in the case of DCC, it's a close call.
This is becoming more and more rare, not only as financial institutions add FTFs to home-currency transactions, but as DCCers regularly bump up their fees to 5% these days.
Very rare indeed. AFAIK, all the US-based card issuers changed their wordings to Foreign Transaction versus Foreign Currency, a few years ago. Citi and Chase languages are very clear - any transaction done outside US regardless the currency is used. Then there are further definition on "transaction", meaning the billing from the merchant. Because of that, I always use a forex free card to make redemption on BA Avios to avoid any unpleasant surprise.
In fact my neighbor bought an Aer Lingus ticket that had a JetBlue leg, on JetBlue website and was in USD - she got charged the 3% Forex fee because the billing was done outside US. She actually had a card that was FOREX free but she used another card to pay thinking it was in USD and got hosed.