percysmith

Fighting on the spot is no-win when shopping/dining with others. My family members are typical impatient Hongkies willing to forgo even 8% rebate/pay 5% fee if it means walking away a minute faster. Hence if I worry that a merchant may apply DCC without asking, I use my AE card.

(In HK, an AE card is available from Standard Chartered that gives HK$2.5/Asia Mile or Krisflyer mile for overseas spending. They charge 2% fee over Amex's rate though.)

I'm surprised to hear your US banks will let you dispute because of the rate applied...so if you got a crappier rate than if DCC was not applied, you can dispute it?
(I really doubt that could occur in HK. It's pretty obvious where DCC occurs because banks here have to state foreign currency amount charged when it is charged, so an item incurred overseas without foreign currency amount is definitely DCC. But HK banks will point to the BoC China "verbage" to deny disputes about the rate or any lack of choice of DCC)

moondog

DCC is supposed be a choice. However, since this isn't always the case, there is a provision to dispute it after the fact. I'm not surprised at all by this because mandatory DCC would be akin to the CCF issue (credit card companies got busted for tacking 2-3% on foreign transactions without disclosing such).

So, basically, you can and should (if you have time) dispute DCC. But, it was a steep learning curve for me because it took my bank (Schwab) ~5 days to figure out what DCC was and advise me of the proper procedure.

percysmith

You only dispute those card slips which you've scribbled a protest over? Or even those without scribbling?

moondog

The scribbling seems to matter not; I didn't even have receipts for half of the charges I disputed. I can't stress enough how poorly developed the dispute channel is; it's basically your word against research that they aren't capable of performing, so your word wins.

percysmith

Schwab in the US seem to be really generous with cardholder complaints.

Banks here in HK are very customer protection-unfriendly. They regard themselves as transaction processors and no more.

Take user kiyee's complaints in the hongkongcard.com complaint for instance http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...ow.php?id=4303, Bank of East Asia (Hong Kong) wants a HK$150 fee before even looking into the complaint.

Another is the 13,000 victims of a yoga chain (Planet Yoga) which failed last year. About more than 80% of members signed up for "prepaid membership" with all prepaid amounts advanced by their issuer banks as an instalment purchase instead of making monthly fee autopayments. When PY failed, most members still have to make payments to their banks - the banks claim they've advanced all membership amounts to PY (they did remit the majority, but not all - they've probably kept 4-10% for themselves as finance charge).

PY front line staff (trainers are usually also sales, with targets) misrepped in a few cases (claiming the payments were cancellable) but the banks initially resisted misrepresentation complaints by pointing to verbage (issuer banks not directly involved in sales process, and they're not required to follow up with their cardholders). A Legislative Council inquiry largely resulted in more verbage. Only when the central bank-cum-bank regulator (Hong Kong Monetary Authority) launched an investigation did many banks offer to waive remaining instalments.

In most instances, complaints are resolved directly with merchant.

It's a severely caveat emptor environment here - this is what HK consumers pay for a "business friendly" environment.

percysmith

I would like to know too. Did you get your hotel cashier to talk your through the procedure?

Jamoldo

To be honest, the hotel cashier would probably not be able to do such a thing for two reasons (but would be great if they did).

1. Their English probably won't be good enough (IME - these folks speak solid English but its very function specific - and that's more than fair enough)

2. (and much more important) - would you expect a typical front desk/checkin clerk in a good US hotel to be able to talk you through DCC? After all many FT'ers don't even know about it. They would probably have to call a manager, who may or may not know about it. After all it seems plenty of banks/agencies directly related are either ignorant and clueless about it.

I think with this and the other DCC threads we are doing ourselves and everyone on this board a huge favor by making sure more folks are aware of this and how to take action; we should all continue to posts all of our experiences and how they were dealt with by all parties involved.

percysmith

I'm a competent Mandarin speaker and Chinese typist - although I'm now based in HK, half my CPA qualifying experience is spent in the PRC working on state-owned companies.

At that time the only improvement I was able to make to my PRC hotel bills was to use Unionpay over Visa - miles earning on credit cards and DCC were innovations proceeding my CPA qualification years.

I had a bit of a rude shock using a Visa in a hotel again last September for earning miles:

http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...ow.php?id=4303
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/catha...hk-30.html#442


The "I declare that I have been offered a choice" verbage is as honest as certain PRC financial statements I had to read, then tear up and redo (okay, not all PRC financial statements are crap, but quality varies greatly depending on preparer and auditor).

I tried searching via baidu and cn.yahoo.com to see if any PRC merchant's documented a way to switch off DCC at Bank of Cheapaxsses terminals - haven't been able to find one yet.

My current workaround is to use AE in PRC where accepted (I like my miles - I have earn rates as low as HK$2.5/mile for RMB spending), and Unionpay where not. I can't remember any places that takes Visa not AE.

But as a lot of my friends don't have AE or Unionpay (esp my school friends from Aus) I like to have a cheatsheet to disarm DCCs on BoC terminals if I can, and cheerfully pass the sheet to every BoC merchant I meet to fxck BoC in the axs. I don't get how come DCC that is as difficult to disarm as bombs in The Hurt Locker be passed off as Visa-compliant.

chanp

Could someone post some receipts with the one we want and the one we DONT want. Of course cross out impt info. Maybe we can print them out and show them how we want the receipt?

percysmith

Example of DONT want:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/catha...sed-hk-30.html

"BASE RMB 2124.00
TIPS
TOTAL (which I handwrote RMB2124-)

RATE: 1.20022 NO CommissionFee
TXN CUR(BASE MAT): HKD2549.28
I declare that I have been offered a choice
of payment currencies and my choice is
final. I understand that the currency
conversion is not provided by VISA."

My bank charged me for HKD2549.28, and denied all overseas earning promotions (don't blame them).


WANT
Everything from "RATE" to "VISA" should not appear.




But good luck trying to get the text off. As far as I'm aware, Bank of Cheapasses has made it near impossible to turn off even if the Chinese merchant is willing to help.



It's not like non-PRC card terminals, where DCC is also offered but you have to choose in writing to turn it on (this kind of card terminal is not commonly offered in China).

YuropFlyer

Not entirely true. As the Yuan is still mostly fixed to the Dollar, and the Dollar is very jumpy against my own currency, it's very easy for quite some big jumps. Yesterday morning CHF against RMB was at 7.05, today it's at 6.83 (Dollar gained a lot against CHF after having lost a lot in the days before) - should I have "locked" it in at 7.05, I might have made quite a nice deal

But I've to give the Chinese hotels/restaurants a good reputation about handling the DCC, I always either got asked if I wanted to pay in my currency or RMB, or got charged in RMB without being asked (which is fine for me) - in Thailand on the other hand, I had 5 star properties not even knowing what DCC is about, and were not very interested when I tried to explain them that I could actually just decline that payment because they never gave me the choice.. same in Spain, where already I had more than once the bill given in CHF straight away..

I think this thread really doesn't do fair to China - there are certainly some "dumb" waiter/hotel clerks there, but according to my experience not more than in other countries, and certainly less then in some "touristic" ones..

robyng

In all fairness - I don't think this is a "China-only" scam. We ran across it in France a couple of years ago. Robyn

percysmith

I concede it's not a China-only scam - I have read (even if I have not encountered personally) about non-PRC card terminals where DCC cannot be turned off.

But in the PRC it's a worrying problem:

- BoC is possibly China's largest acquirer. It's a Big Four bank in the PRC. I don't have the statistics but in my experience they acquire something like one in every three to one in every two card transaction;

- they are aggressively pushing DCC; and

- their implementation is fxcked.

mnredfox

Yes they did, and I got them to write the instructions out for me (in Chinese). My only problem is right now that sheet of paper is in China and I'm in the US for a few more weeks. Will post when I get back.

Please read my posts above, it's pretty clear. I'll post more when I get back to China.

mnredfox

+1 to Schwab, they took care of me when I first ran into this problem. Then again I do have a sizeable investment with them.

I had a successful DCC selection option in HKG recently. I circled HKG instead of USD on my receipt and later found out indeed it was in HKG and thus worked as it should.

DCC in China is more sneaky though, as you have nothing to really indicate a choice. Signing merely indicates that you HAD a choice, hence I call it a scam in my thread.