I think you got it wrong about the DCC claim.

The DCC claim was successful as Chase offered to issue a partial credit of the whole amount charged - far exceed the amount of DCC. The full amount charged was $49.45 including 5% DCC. The DCC amount was only $2.25 that I was willing to just let it go but stupidly to file a dispute "just for the team". Chase proposed a partial credit of $40 while all it should have "absorbed" is just $2.25. So in this sense the DCC claim was successful.

It is the implementation of the resolution failed miserably. The time and efforts involved are TOTALLY NOT WORTH IT, principle or no principle.

At the end of the day, it is NOT the merchant, but the bank, eat the cost - both the actual $ but also the cost of man power, plus my own time.

Totally NOT worth it unless it is a big enough amount. How to define how much is big enough to worth the time and effort, of course is YMMV.

What has happened, I suspect that is caused by the poor system design when the system did not see a required form entry on whether a customer accepted the merchant's contest or continued to dispute, the system defaulted to rebill the full amount, EVEN THOUGH the rep from the disputer dept ACTUALLY put in the necessary credit.

If you pay attention to my detailed posts, during the weekend after the rep proposed the resolution on Friday, I did see a $9.45 (the net of $49.45 original amount and the $40 partial credit) being reflected in the Available Credit, despite cannot be seen as a pending charge. So the rep indeed has done her part on what is promised.

Unfortunately, that is where Chase system may have superseded her manual entry due to the dispute is a contested one and there is no coding of customer's reaction. So the system defaults to rebill the full amount. This is purely my guess but it is the only logical way to explain why her manual entries never show up and eventually "disappeared" from the Available Credit figure. Then the full disputed amount was rebilled.

I reported here that the Available Credit Limit now reflected a $49.45 charge instead. I monitored the "events" closely because we were leaving for a 16 days cruise without internet access. Calls to the rep did not get return before we left for a month long trip on Wed morning.

Statement will close while we were on the cruise and Payment Due Date would fall shortly after we got back on land. I had no idea when we would have secured internet access to make online payment in time and voiced my concern right on this thread. Someone here told me that Chase would allow transfer from Chase own banking account even the card balance was Zero. That was exactly what I did on the morning of our departure as I did not want to worry about secured internet connection so I could pay on time.

As reported on the Chase dispute thread, 2 statements have passed with no trace of the $40 credit. Once I found the Chase letter detailed the resolution of the DCC claim, exactly as what I was told over the phone, I started calling the rep but of course never got a call back after 1/2 calls just like the first time. That is when I decided to reach a manager in the dispute dept so to resolve this crap once and for all.

For you continue to advocate people to file DCC disputes, I strongly suggest you to read thru the Chase dispute thread and learn from others posts that Chase handles disputes very poorly, even including other disputes that have nothing to do with DCC.

My approach? I would return to how I previously handle it - I chalk it up as an expense incurred on trip if unfortunately I fail to avoid it. Most our spend once we started our trip, are the local transportation and dining, plus admission fees, as our flights and hotels are almost always paid with miles and points, paid transportation modes inevitably were purchased before trip started. Most of the time thanks to hotel status, we have lounge access/free buffet breakfast - that also greatly reduces dining spend.
Local transportation, dining, sightseeing, etc do NOT add up enough for me to be bothered by the occasional DCCs.

Like in Poland I got 2 DCCed charges - one inflated the amount by $0.20, the other by $0.38. You would spend more than the sum of these just by using a public bathroom in EU.

Now for those who pay their hotel bills at check out, that is a different scenario if they are being DCCed. Indeed, these folks definitely need to file claims should they be DCCed. Though I would suggest always follow up the claim with writing and send it to the address at the back of your statement - that is the only method protected by law.