As I said, US is not totally paradise. A greater percentage of people in this country are really honest and kind, but being a country with hundreds of millions of people, there surely are bad guys.

The moment I arrived in this country about 10 years ago, I got ripped off by a Time Warner Cable installation guy, who told me I had to pay $30 to him and this would appear on my bill as a deposit. Surely it didn't.

Then I got ripped off by a tow-truck driver even none of my car and my friend's car were on his truck. We paid him $50 so he didn't tow, without a receipt.

I've come to almost all states where there are something that can attract tourists, and I've met all kinds of bad guys there. However, I would still say 99% of the Americans are very good. Bad guys are everywhere in the world.

Regarding business practices, I think US has some really tough laws to protect consumers. If you don't believe me, try getting some courtesy credit from a DCC transaction from a bank in China, and see whether they give a damn to customers... So, some bad merchants can scam a few tourists, but a big scam would always fail big when it is big enough.

These 专车 apps have already attracted enough attention of the government... I doubt how much longer they can exist in China. The foot soldiers (those Uber drivers) are gonna be crushed by anti-黑车 enforcement. Much easier to take those apps down than having to deal with the developer companies legally.

Is this DCC avoidable?

Even if people can dodge the tax using DCC, I think in a country like Chile, this loophole will lead to DCCs with mark-up as high as the tax. After all, it's not a country with a very developed free-market, is it?

Nothing, really. Since dual nationals have foreign passports and could easily have foreign credit cards, I don't see how this could be prevented other than by requiring a foreign utility bill or something like that.

I think this is key. It's also that companies enforce their policies. For instance, Visa and MC prohibit merchants from refusing to complete a transaction because the customer doesn't want to show ID with a properly signed card. There are some businesses who ignored this policy in the past but ended up dropping the ID requirement after a customer complained to Visa or MC. The same goes for minimum purchase requirements or imposing a credit card surcharge (where the law doesn't allow for such things).

I feel like there simply aren't the same protections overseas. There are a lot of merchants who don't seem to care about the policies of the payment networks, and this extends to DCC. You ask to be billed in local currency, and the response is, "Let's see what happens." (The merchant knows exactly what will happen.) Then the merchant gives you problems when you demand that the transaction be voided and run again without DCC.

I would say in the US that the cashiers would be a lot more willing to work with the customer in instances of DCC such that if any of us were to encounter it we would be able to opt out. There is a certain customer service oriented culture here that tends to do the right thing for the customer.

In the case of DCC at a restaurant in the US their motivation to help me would correlate with the size of tip that I would give. :D

Any official link to this policy?:confused:

There are also plenty of businesses in the US that ignore this policy and nothing has happened. It really all depends on their acquirer. My local Walmart has been doing it for years, I have filled out the online complaint form numerous times, and nothing has happened.

Sure, here is the one for Visa on page 34 of the guide. The guidelines state:

The caveat is that some jurisdictions allow/require merchants to ask for ID for a signature-based credit card purchase. Later in the section it also says that checking ID doesn't change the merchant's liability in the case of a chargeback, which is true. It's amusing that many of these places think they're covering their tails by requesting ID, but it isn't the case.

This is also true. It's no different than pretty much everywhere there is a DCC implementation. Few, if any, of the DCC offers I've seen have met the requirements that the payment networks have outlined.

In the case of Walmart, it might be better to file a customer experience complaint on the corporate website vs. with Visa/MC directly. It is worthwhile noting that there have been reports of successful complaints to the payments networks where some small businesses quit checking for ID as a condition of a credit card sale.

I believe that when a complaint is made to a payment network, they simply forward it to the bank that processes that merchant's credit card sales, which then notifies the merchant. A small mom-and-pop business owner might receive the letter and tell his cashier "hey, stop checking IDs". A large chain like Walmart isn't so nimble. They have clearly established procedures to follow, committees to make changes, a line of command to go through, and so on. When someone in some corporate office someplace gets the letter, they most likely decide it's too much hassle to implement and not of any particular consequence, and it gets ignored.

I did get one of my local supermarkets to change its policy regarding checking ID with a letter to them with the above quote from the visa operating manual after a long heated discussion with the manager who gave me the bs the checking of ID was for my protection. It is of course a fact that showing ID with any sort of confidential information (driver's license number, birth date, ss #) while highly unlikely to do so most certainly increases from 0 the possibility of identity theft by some clerk with a photographic memory. Again not likely but...

Unfortunately the vast majority of my charges outside the USA are generally small and in those instances where simply reasoning with the manager and being told they had no control over dcc, I will not resort to cash which is one of the purposes of this scam. I simply follow what we have agreed upon should be the procedure (writing on the charge slip local currency not offered and circling the amount in local currency) and following through with a complaint when I get home. Invariably, they will not charge it back but rather give me a courtesy credit for the disputed amount which is what allows this scam to continue. Let the merchants have to deal with a few chargebacks and it will begin to die on the vine. But too many people, far too many, actually feel the merchant is doing them a favor by telling them exactly how much something costs in a currency they understand.

I agree that it's unlikely any ID theft would occur, but disseminating such information increases the risk by a nonzero probability. It is not for your protection because you are not liable for fraudulent purchases. It's not for the merchant's protection either because checking ID does not absolve a merchant from chargebacks or change a merchant's liability whatsoever.

I fortunately haven't been in a situation where I've had to deface the receipt and call the bank yet. As I've said multiple times before, the courtesy credit isn't the best solution since our banks shouldn't have to absorb a merchant's bad behavior, but at least it placates us and we're not out any money.

What infuriates me are those who know about DCC, recognize that it's a scam, but they don't do anything if they get hit by it. They just sheepishly shrug it off rather than expressing righteous indignation that I or someone like percysmith would. The result is that far too many merchants go unchecked that perpetuates this scam.

As for the people who ask, "How much is this in real money?!" and don't take kindly to your guidance that DCC is a markup, I would say let the merchants charge them for their ignorance.

The biggest German online magazine (and one of the biggest print medias) has published following article, telling people basically that DCC is a scam:

http://www.spiegel.de/reise/aktuell/...a-1008582.html

Such articles are really good news, showing more and more people are aware of the scams of DCC ^

Not a single word I understood... Sigh...

After several years, I ran into the ID situation for the first time.
It was a local KFC in Kingman, AZ.
The card was properly signed.
Do they do this because they don't believe in signatures anymore? Even in Europe or Australia did no one ask for my ID. They just compare my signatures really hard...

So wait, the Google translation of that article sounds like DCC is possible at ATMs too. I thought it wasn't?

Absolutely. There are a ton of DCC ATMs in the world and they're very aggressive with their "we can't guarantee your rate if you don't let us scam you" warnings.