Originally Posted by
sfvoyage
When I first spoke with Chase, one of its representatives told me that other cardmembers have reported exactly the same issue with GBP to USD conversion during the same time frame.
I see where you might be confused.
Let me try to explain why you have zero chance of legally being entitled to a refund on the difference. But you may be able to get a goodwill gesture.
Say I was trading FX (like banks do) normal market conditions means there IS a difference between the buy and sell rate of a currency, this is ALWAYS there. It is called a 'spread'
During unstable political/economic changes, this 'spread' of the buy and sell rate HAS TO become bigger, to cover the volatility of the market swings, or the banks would loose TRILLIONS as FX trades are leveraged.
So you could put on a short 'bet' that USD will devalue against GBP, for £1. But stand to make a gain of £10 if it comes true. NORMAL market conditions would mean that a equal loss of £10 would be possible. BUT this was NOT a normal market event, so stop losses were not respected and Banks stood to loose £40 on a £1 bet!
For this reason banks and other big volume traders do not place FX 'bets' during political/economic events. Trade volume decreases and spreads increase to cover losses. Exactly what you experienced.
Basically, you should have checked the Visa exchange rate, which you can do online.