Originally Posted by
Majuki
I know of the cancel trick, but that didn't work when percysmith and I tried at Greyhound Cafe last year. So, in 90% of cases if I say local currency in China I will be alright? For some reason, I thought the problem was much more widespread. I'll definitely keep my Discover at the ready to use instead.
No, you won't be OK if just saying "local currency please". Almost all of the machines in China need the "cancel trick" and you have to act fast, usually within 3 seconds from when card is swiped or when the amount is entered. Meanwhile, almost all of the cashiers in China don't know about this DCC stuff and they won't understand how to disable them. You the customer needs to know the cancel trick, unfortunately... Even if the machine can be defeated, the cashiers might not let you do anything to the machine for the fear of punishment from the management (as non-DCC transactions do incur more fees).
What I said is that for the forced-DCC machines, 90% needs cancel trick, and so forth. Non-compliant machines (those don't show clearly what is going on and those don't give you options) are like 100% here in China. Nowhere is safe here...
Some places even have a separate machine for foreign cards (we all can guess why). Usually these machines are from 交行.
Of course, if you go to Ritz Carlton or Westin, they definitely know how to disable DCC so no problem there~
Regarding the Greyhound Café thing, I do believe that machine needs post-transaction inputs like those Global Payment machines do. The owner however doesn't know how to do that, or the business providing the machine to that owner doesn't want the owner to know how to do. Kind of hard for me to believe there is a hard-wired-to-the-bone DCC-forcing machine in HK, not China. I'll say 99% of the chance the DCC-disabling feature is hidden somewhere in that machine, very deeply hidden!
Originally Posted by
Sintaku
I didn't know it was so widespread. Even though the UK gets a lot of Eurozone cards most machines are set to GBP only. And even if they have the other option since you actually insert the card into the machine and make the transaction, you control what happens.
I'd hate to have someone "help" me by giving me a crappy exchange rate with DCC. I wonder which eastern countries predominantly do DCC, I plan to go to Japan and I wonder what they do there.
My experience in London and Paris is really good. Only did I encounter DCC at Fortrum and Mason, and I was offered a choice on the keypad with clear instructions.
Don't worry about Japan. As percysmith said, you do need to go VERY out of the way to find a DCC there. Japan is not famous for this kind of nefarious business practices at all. I've spent half a month in Kansai area last month living mostly on credit cards and encountered none DCC.