Originally Posted by
Majuki
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?
China: My primary card is a MC, so I would say 95%. On my travels in China I was vigilant, but was always charged in RMB/CNY straight away, not needing to protest.
Our company requires you to report the expenses in the local currency shown on the receipt (not the CC charge slip), which is then converted at the daily exchange rate valid at the date of the receipt and a standard 1or 2% is added automatically to cover any fx variances for you. The background here is that our company provides us with fee free credit cards (Amex and Visa) which AFAIK have a fx transaction fee. This ~2% roughly covered the DCC 'spread' encountered by my colleague, until he was hit at the DXB luxury hotel
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Originally Posted by
NYCFlyer10001
Avoided DCC inflight buying something from duty-free shopping on Lufthansa. The F/A swiped (not dipped), entered the amount, then hit enter. An offer appeared that I couldn't read the terms of because the F/A so quickly hit "EUR" and went on with the transaction. The only way I know it was DCC is that the two softkeys at the bottom of the terminal were "USD" and "EUR".
The LH on board duty free give the option to pay in € or $, but FAs are instructed to charge in €.