Originally Posted by
abaheti
I have seen this in a few high end stores. One most recent was in Peru, very high quality, expensive wool clothing. Price tags in USD and purchases charged in USD. Not sure if it is legal there but it was true on the ground.
This is very common in Latin America at establishments catering to international travelers, such as hotels and hotel gift shops. (I've also seen it in Israel, at TLV duty-free). I don't have any problem with that at all, since the price you see is what you get.
When I was in Guatemala last year, I had a few places (one hotel, and a fancy gift shop in the lobby of the Westin Camino Real in Guatemala City) where the price was listed in dollars, but when it came time to making the card transaction, the place converted the USD price to quetzales at a rate that was roughly but not exactly the market rate. At first I was a bit annoyed by that, but it really didn't make a material difference in my final charge one way or the other. I think at the gift shop, the amount charged to the card ended up being a couple of dollars below the "official" USD price shown on the price tag of the lovely jade owl that I totally didn't need but bought anyway. Plus I got UR points from Chase on top of that.