Originally Posted by
Majuki
Historically, DCC wasn't as big of a scam as it is today. DCC offers of 3% or so were common, and cards used to charge a currency exchange fee. Ironically, it benefitted one historically to accept DCC at up to 3% since you'd get rewards on the whole transaction amount. As cards switched to foreign transaction fees and more and more cards began to offer 0% FTFs, accepting DCC no longer made sense.
My experience in early days was that even with DCC card issuers that charged their own FTF still charged the FTF because the transaction was "foreign" - i.e., the fee was for the higher risk on foreign transactions and the cost of dispute resolution, not the convenience of converting currency (or so they claimed). So you would pay ~ 3%+3% with DCC, or 3% without. In other words, DCC *never* made sense to me.
Re express checkout - it's unclear to me too sometimes! I've found many hotels have already processed the checkout and charged your card early in the morning, even if you go to the desk to get the receipt and confirm the bill. I'm not sure if that had happened in this instance - I don't think so - but anyway I was clear on DCC and they did otherwise. Still sorting. One has mostly fixed, but I still came out $10 down. Not sure whether worth arguing further.