The scam is that A3 charges a 5-6% fee for this conversion, and people may not even notice, for example Knobbgb says the rate always seemed about right. Had I booked some A3 flights recently, I might also have fallen victim to this as I assumed flights out of LHR would have a base price in GBP - but it is in euros. This also explains why OTAs such as Expedia pricing in GBP, at the IATA exchange rate, are cheaper than A3 direct - ignoring discount OTAs which are unreliable.
I have bank cards which do not charge any conversion fees to pay in a different currency, so I would use these to buy a flight priced in euros. I would only be subject to the Mastercard markup of typically -0.25% to +0.5%, or the Visa markup of typically +0.5% to +1%. (Well, I do have a card which charges 1.95% for non local transactions, but also pays 2.4% cashback on transactions in a user-selected category, with the option to select foreign transactions as the qualifying category).
Like I already wrote previously, nearly every merchant does that. Back in 2010 or so I had a Visa debit card, that even though it was issued in Greece and thus handled everything in Euros, would not charge me anything for paying for my purchases on the British Amazon website in GBP. BUT, that only lasted 2-3 years (before they started charging full conversion fees), only worked with the debit Visa of that specific bank (not any credit card) and only worked with Amazon UK as far as any foreign currency was concerned. My other Visas and Mastercard (debit or credit cards) have always charged me for any kind of conversion (well, I was mostly purchasing stuff in USD and GBP, but I have a few examples of purchases in HUF, AED) and they've always charged me exactly what the conversion rate was on the Visa or Mastercard website plus 2,5% for transactions with Mastercard and 2% for transactions with VISA (though that's 99,9% the bank's commission and not the card issuer's). If I opted to buy stuff on Amazon UK in EUR then the price was always higher than the price ING GBP + 2,5%, usually much higher, probably around the 5%-6% area mentioned here, same goes for pretty much all other websites/merchants. But I did test this once (using Amazon's currency conversion to pay in Euros) and I didn't get charged anything more than the price displayed on the merchant's website (I also avoided paying with my Amex in any foreign currency, since they charged way more than 2,5%!).
Anyway, the "logic" in my eyes is quite simple: If you pay the recipient of the money in a different currency than what they use themselves (btw kudos to all who managed to open accounts in various countries and run their transactions through the "corresponding" country of the customer's currency, so as to offer better prices!), then they will have the conversion done on their end and on most cases this won't happen instantly, as the payment first has to clear on the customer's end, make its way to the merchant, then get credited their accounts and get converted in their currency before it clears with their own bank.
So they have to account for possible fluctuations in the exchange rate between the time the customer hits "buy" and the time that amount finally gets converted in their currency by their own bank.
I find this understandable and to be expected on virtually all transactions. The real scam is exchanging cash, which I only had to do once (it wasn't even any of those dubious exchange kiosks, but a very well-known German Bank!) and I learned never to do it again. Long live Revolut
!
I really can't judge whether this DCC thing as far as Aegean is concerned is a scam or not. If indeed 5-6% is the case, that seems almost fair enough (2,5% conversion fee from card issuer / bank and another 2,5%-3% to prevent losses from currency fluctuations). Also, where one sees an airline trying to generate income, a customer might see an opportunity to reduce their hassling with their banks about transactions in foreign currencies and their fees. I would like to say that I don't like the fact, that I have to get my calculator and open xe. com on my browser every time I want to check out some prices in Budapest or ex-BUD
. I still book in HUF, but it's a nuisance already...
