Originally Posted by
Colin
Just a little warning to BofA credit card customers using a credit card with a foreign transaction fee.
I have a BofA Virgin Atlantic credit card, which contains a 1% foreign transaction fee.
I used this card to purchase a ticket from the British Airways USA website, for a trip originating in the US to London, for a fare quoted in USD throughout the entire booking process, and have an eticket receipt that says "Flight tickets issued by British Airways, USA".
BofA applied a 1% charge on my account.
Called BofA and they say the charge was "processed" in London. Explain all above facts and BofA says charge is valid. Said I want to dispute the charge and BofA says by policy they do not allow disputes on fees. After wasting 15 minutes of my life, BofA says that as a goodwill gesture that they will credit me half of the fee.
Unbelievable. Ripe for a class action suit.
What I fund unbelievable is that you used a card for BA competitor Virgin Atlantic to buy a ticket on BA!
That's probably an unusual case. BA has a credit card from Chase, and that BA credit card charges 0% forex:
So if you use a BA card to buy BA tickets, you'll have no such issue.
Btw, the other thing I find unbelievable is that you're so upset at just a
1% foreign transaction fee on a foreign transaction (which they cut in half to 0.5%). Most cards that have a foreign transaction fee have a
2.7% to 3% foreign transaction fee!
As the above link shows, there are plenty of cards out there that have 0% forex (including a couple from BofA). If you want to get 0% forex when buying from companies that are based overseas, the safest thing is to use one of those, especially if you're not using a card that gives you extra miles/points for the purchase (and of course, why would a Virgin Atlantic card give you extra miles on purchases from its arch competitor?
).