Originally Posted by
oliver2002
In other news I'm happy to report that inspite of extreme hectic travel in the US, Europe and Asia I've
not been hit by DCC at all in the last six months. China has been really good to me, and I've been in little provincial towns as well as major cities. Some terminals have a problem reading my MC EMV chip for some reason, so there I've used my Amex. The only place I encountered DCC recently was in PRG looking to take out 3000 CZK from an ATM. Thanks to this thread I knew what button to press to avoid it.
Re DCC and if people want it: my colleague even strangely prefers it. After I explained it to him (our MC takes 1.25% forex) back in 2013 he still shrugged. But then he stayed at a swanky place in Dubai and the DCC cost him 50€ extra, which he didn't get reimbursed from our company (we have a fixed daily exchange rate) and he spend 15 minutes complaining about DCC to me. Another 'I told you so' moment...
I have yet to find an ATM that makes it impossible to opt out of DCC. Usually a simple selection of "continue without conversion" and a confirmation of "OMG YES I KNOW BAD THINGS COULD HAPPEN IF I DON'T USE YOUR TERRIBLE EXCHANGE RATE!" is a good enough procedure to avoid DCC at ATMs.
I have heard that China is better than it used to be, but I thought there were still problems. Would you say DCC is less common in the provincial towns compared to major cities? If you're primarily using AmEx you won't see DCC, but what % of your transactions are MasterCard? You're still not seeing DCC, or it's easy to avoid?
As for your colleague, the word
schadenfreude comes to mind when someone with a cavalier or apathetic attitude toward DCC finally gets burned. This contradicts the DCC literature, which extols the virtues of DCC and being able to reconcile expense reports in one's own currency. Hopefully the outcome of this is a traveler who will always be vigilant and avoid DCC in the future. Why did he prefer DCC before this? Was the company picking up the expense?