Long story short I have a sapphire and united mileage plus card. Been living in Colombia now for 2 years and use my cards without a hitch all over. A few months ago I had lasik done at a very well known clinic here and after the day of my surgery I recovered and flew back to my city. On big purchases here I always check my CC to make sure I got the correct visa rate exchange for that day. Well I noticed I was charged in dollars by roughly $80 more than I should have.

So I called chase and asked them to look into it and gave them the days rate from visa and told them it was off by 100 pesos to the dollar($2309 charge). A month went by and they came back and said the clinic processed my card in dollars on their end and they would call the clinic. Of course my wife called the clinic for me and explained the situation and they denied it over and over. She called 4 times, finally another month went back and Chase called and said the clinic claimed no wrong doing, plus I signed the receipt.
I said that is true and my eyes were severely dilated so my vision wasn't the best but still it's a mistake. The clinic a few weeks before charged my card in pesos by the way for the initial exam.


A few days ago I sent over my statements to the clinic showing 100's of transactions from Colombia that show a charge in pesos with the conversion below it to dollars and theirs was the only charge on my statement twice showing direct dollars. Also showed them the time they charged my card correctly in pesos. They reply back with their bank statement showing pesos. Well that makes complete sense because a colombian bank operates in pesos lol. I tried to explain to them that they have the machine programmed to have their bank do the conversion, which in return either takes a commission or just gives a bad rate.


Sorry long story wasn't so short. Just curious if anyone else has experienced this?