Originally Posted by
KT550
The card terminal showed the amount as EUR 126.10 and after entering my PIN and returning the terminal to the staff member, I was asked if I wanted to pay in EUR or GBP.
I requested payment in Euro but the resulting payment receipt showed that Dynamic Currency Conversion "DCC" had been used
and I had been charged GBP 114.48.
I was under the impression that the currency selection had to take place before the transaction was authorised by the card holder by PIN but this appears not to be the case.
I pointed this out immediately and the staff member reversed the transaction. I'm not sure if this was a scam or a genuine error.
Anyway, the reversal is for the local currency amount of EUR 126.10 which has been refunded to my card account as GBP 112.37, instead of the amount of GBP 114.48.
I am trying to figure out what happened. Did the receipt show the [X] next to the GBP amount? Did the EUR/GBP prompt happen after PIN entry and the receptionist ask you the question, or did you see the prompts on the terminal?
The best practice is to retain the terminal while it authorizes post PIN entry to avoid staff at a merchant making a selection for you. This is most certainly intentional; the rate of "genuine error" when referring to DCC hovers between 0 and 1%. This is a case of
Automatic DCC and goes against MasterCard's
compliance guidelines for DCC:
DCC was automatically applied to the transaction:
either after the Cardholder had entered their PIN code or because the
Merchant chose DCC on the Cardholder’s behalf.
It sounds like the transaction was refunded rather than voided. If you ever find yourself in a DCC situation in the future, make sure that the transaction gets voided versus a simple refund. Usually with a refund the merchant will
not use DCC and let Visa/MC process the conversion. Again, this is
intentional. I'm happy that the hotel provided a €5 credit, but you shouldn't have to jump through the process to get this.
I would encourage you to file complaint with MasterCard using
this form. There is a selection for "Currency Conversion" under the topic, and explain the circumstances of the transaction.