Originally Posted by
Happy
You make a very good point.
I agree this is the point to consider - My case is usd/euro transaction, and YES, the hotel did have DCC option on its system, asked me whether I wanted it to be billed in USD or Euro.
Hence I did not take the offer of reversing CC charge - Who knows what the property would do when crediting the CC? In any event there would be exchange rate issue, especially during the period Euro went from almost 1.09 down to 1.07 - I will lose in the refund due to the exchange rate. It would not make sense just in order to use the daunt GC I would stand to lose on the exchange rate fluctuation. This is A Loss situation to me. So I declined the option.
OTOH I am so glad The Notary autograph at Philly Center City is so competent in using multiple GCs, like every FD agent on duty knew the steps. Now my stash has been drawn down to just over $200 after using almost $1K on this trip. I can live with this until who knows when we would stay at a BonVoy property again.
I have absolutely no desire to buy the eGC during the current Discover America or whatever travel industry promotion is called. Pretty sure AMEX will have those statement credit offers in the rest of the year - they seem to be at least twice a year. More than good enough for us.
At least with the GC that I had, the FDCs in the US swiped them as if they were credit cards - so no insane issues like in Europe that the FDC needs to find the a big folder and browse through page by page looking for givex instructions... I have seen one flipping through the whole thing and couldn't find it and when she was flipping through the second time, I said you need to look for "givex"...
Using multiple cards to settle a payment is something new at least in Denmark and Germany. The younger cashiers might know that but unlikely the grumpy mid to old age clerks. If you pay part card part cash they can probably handle that... In Japan on the other hand I have been asked multiple times if I want to charge everything to one card (even though I only bought a few $ of items).
What pushed me over the edge of not ever wanting to buy them was how MB handles stolen GCs - even if we can get a good exchange rate of 1 USD is 0.75EUR (it's almost 1:1) - I'm not risking that.