olouie

Could use some advice. Made a purchase on my platinum while travelling in local currency and when I made the purchase Amex showed it as $440 USD. A few days later the charge updated when posted to $468 - around 6% more. Amex’s only direction was to dispute it with the merchant but they won the dispute since really they dispute isn’t with the merchant but how Amex is applying exchange rates. Similar purchases using visa had a small under .5% variation but over 6% seems crazy,

Has anyone experienced an issue like this before? Any way to escalate and get Amex to explain how the rate went up from the time it was made to when it was posted?

ovacikar

What currency is it, and the date of transaction? İ wonder if the merchant tricked you to a DCC transaction.

olouie

Lira on Nov 28th. The receipt was in LIRA so that seems fine. Something happened on Amex backend.

Would have been better off with DCC, they offered $450 using DCC.

mia

To my knowledge, American Express does not allow DCC. Also, in my experience American Express (USA) does not show pending transactions for purchases made in another currency. This may have changed recently, but I don't understand how olouie was able to see two different USD amounts. In any event, if we know the currency, the transaction date and the posting date we may be able to see how the exchange rate changed.

olouie

They show pending now for my purchasers in foreign currency since November at least. The lira fell roughly 10% the next few days so if anything it should have gone in my favor.

Edit: posted dec 2 I think but with nov 28 date.

Eastbay1K

My recent Forex transactions showed as pending. I don't recall that in the past, but my recent International trip had the pendings show right away.

ovacikar

Try was extremely volatile on those days. Even apple stopped selling products at some point. Around the dates it fluctuated from 12 to 13.50, almost a 10% increase. So a 6% increase in posted amount would not be crazy.

İ think you were caught up currency crisis of Turkey.

İ used amex in Hilton at the beginning of November in turkey and the amex exchange rate was in line.

olouie

Right but with the currency devaluation it should have gotten better not worse for me from time of purchase. Unless Amex is going back in time to pull an exchange rate from the day before and applying it a few days after. I made a similar charge with Visa at the same time and it came out much better (0.5% difference but that is common). Not sure what Amex does that makes it worse for consumers. If the FX is falling vs dollar at worst you should get what it was the day of the purchase right?

mia

November 28 was a Sunday. It's certainly possible that they used, say, Friday's rate for all weekend transactions, but they should be able to explain this to you if you work your way past the frontline agents who would have no knowledge of how the exchange rates are derived.

olouie

Any idea how to escalate? So far the only thing Amex has offered is to dispute the charge which doesn’t seem right as it’s not really a dispute with the merchant. Agents say there is nothing else they can do or anyone else to talk to.

Perhaps Amex showing pending charges now is causing issues if that system isn’t linked up to their actual exchange rates.

carlitos

Wow, you actually got caught, like many other FTers have told you, in an extremely volatile country, and to be honest, it could have gone both ways. Reminds me of the times when I went to a wedding in Venezuela and we were advise to NOT use our Credit Cards to pay for anything. The bride's family brought a black market broker to exchange our USD with an insane price (yea, black market) and ended up paying laughable prices for Hotel, Private Taxi services, F&B pre wedding and having a great time. This was in 2008, so you can do the math of where Venezuela is right now. I can't see Turkey going the same route with a president that doesn't understand basic macro and micro economic concepts. So all in all, I guess you should let it go and learn. In the end, Turkey has to be super cheap to travel to, and prices for goods and services have to be equally cheap as those on Indonesia or even Thailand.

olouie

Sure, but again exchange rate devalued vs the dollar. So to get caught up in the devaluation but have Amex act like it was increasing vs the dollar makes no sense. I guess just a lesson to not use Amex if things are devaluing in your favor since they seem to roll the opposite way. No issues with Visa or MC while there even when things changed overnight - it was always the rate on the day purchase was made (with some minor adjustments). Not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but Amex service has been terrible lately and this just adds to it - if they would just explain why they increased it from the pending charge I probably would be ok with it, but no one at Amex that I can reach has any explanation for why they did the increase or how they do FX. Its not like they make any of that public either.

Turkey is both cheap and expensive at the same time. Local goods and food is cheap, but luxury or imported goods are super expensive and booming since many of the upper class get paid in EUR or USD and do not care about local lira rates. Car sales are booming for the rich. Luxury malls had lines out the door with people trying to buy LV, Prada, Gucci, Rolex etc.

olouie

Making a bit of progress. Amex has confirmed they use the rates found at https://www.oanda.com/currency-converter and it happens daily. But reps are stumped as to why they are not matching up with what their system said it was supposed to be charged at or why the pending shows something different. According to the rep I am speaking with pending amounts in FX are inaccurate in many cases. But they see it should have been around $450 and not $468 on that day.

Their guess is that its adding the foreign transactions fees onto the platinum card (which are supposed to be separate item for cards that have it) when its not supposed to be charged.

Ok - finally rep found that the FX gets applied on the day its processed / posted, not day you purchase and Amex credited me $40 that they actually overcharged me since the rate fell again in subsequent days. Took a few escalations but looks like they seem to know they have an FX problem sometimes if you call in and are persistent.

mgo72

Hello,

I have the same issue since November and have exact the same experience as topic starter.

MY charges are all made in Euro, and about 30 or more per month. Since November they start in Pending and when they post it is always 1-7% higher. Never cheaper!

And The euro is not a volatile country like some replies here accusé someone to go to Turkey.

I will make printscreens of it and make at the end of the month a calculation. For me it will probably about 100-300$ per month!

If you do not check regularly your card, you will not see this, but it is not a coincidence anymore. Currency rate fluctuations would also work in our favour, but it does not.

Mine is the Amex Hilton Aspire with no foreign transactions fees.

olouie

Might be worth it to file a complaint with the CFBP if they don’t fix it since it’s very difficult to get them to credit the amounts. For now I think it’s best to avoid Amex for fx transactions since the issue seems systematic.

Small differences are normal - under 1-2% I would say since they use the days highest rate. But 6-7% should not be happening. Either really broken or outright fraud.