Do you normally have to get the dispute paperwork sent to you to sign and return when it's an international transaction, or can you do it all online?

If I'm going to do average one dispute every day, it will be quite a bit of paperwork to sign.

Anybody doing this amounts of disputes, or just the random one?

I withdrew 100 THB from a Family Mart ATM in Bangkok. There was no prompt to decline DCC as far as I could tell, nor any warning that the ATM would charge a fee. I should have been charged only ~$3 USD, but my Ally Bank activity shows I was charged nearly $9 for this withdrawal. Is this an extreme case of DCC, or a rogue ATM that charges fees without warning? Ally's ATM fee for international withdrawals is usually just 1%.

A 150THB operator's fee http://www.dontworryjusttravel.com/a...-baht-atm-fee/

A quick Google search shows that Thai banks usually charge 150 or 180 THB (4.5 or 5.5 USD), so that could be it.

Pretty much all ATMs in Thailand charge 150/180 THB. It's a well-known tourist-"scam". If you're using a guaranteed-ATM-fee-free card you can usually get your money back (German DKB comes in mind.. I think Schwab in the US is the same) but otherwise it's suggested not to use ATMs in Thailand or only for bigger amounts of money (so the rip-off is smaller in percentage)

Most ATMs in the US charge 3 dollars..

If you're US based, use Schwab or Fidelity. They don't charge their own fees, currency conversion fees, and reimburse ATM operator fees. Just be sure to opt out of any DCC offers. Otherwise, some banks here charge a $5 international ATM access fee, 3% conversion fees, and pass on whatever ATM operator fees one gets charged. Quite an expensive way to get money overseas and might even make currency exchanges at the airport competitive by comparison!

That depends on the card issuer. Filing disputes is typically a manual process since the common cases would be things like disputing fraudulent transactions or a merchant billing error. Presumably these things wouldn't happen to you often, and the card issuer wants to collect as much information as possible when investigating the dispute. Also, the infrastructure for the dispute process was established long before the time of online banking or even DCC.

Being based in China can be frustrating since it is among the worst - if not the worst - offender when it comes to DCC and being able to opt out. As a result, unless you relish filling out these dispute forms and your card issuer doesn't mind - certainly many on this thread enjoy filing DCC-related chargebacks :D - I would suggest for having strategies to minimize the chances of encountering DCC. This means using cash for smaller purchases or using Discover/0% FTF AmEx wherever possible. Learn which merchants have DCC and how to opt out of DCC with various terminals. Save your DCC battles for big purchases where you're more likely to get cooperation in trying to solve the issue (checking out of a hotel or big department store purchase) versus smaller purchase where the cashier doesn't care (coffee shop where you just got a $4 latte).

Thanks for the helpful tips. Thankfully I only had to withdraw cash once; 150/180THB is an awfully high fee for a single ATM transaction.

On a related note, I wrote about what seems to be Norwegian's own version of DCC: bad exchange rate in excess of 25% more than market rate for bookings in USD versus NOK, applicable to all cards (not just Visa/MC), and payment currency is tied to language choice (difficult to opt-out). And only the US language version of the site is exempt from the 1.99% credit card surcharge (unless you want to use a debit card). Read more here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other...norwegian.html

Maybe someone in this thread cares more about the issue; I didn't get much of a response in the "other European airlines" forum. This is the most egregious example of overcharging related to currency choice I've ever seen. How can we make them stop doing this?

Definitely people on this thread care about such issues, but you can't stop ignorance. It's just like people swearing up and down that they'll never get burned again by flying <you name it ultra low cost carrier>, but there are many more who will take the bait. If the prices are 2-5x cheaper, I think few people will question the applied exchange rate which allows the markup to continue.

For Chase, I found you can send a Secure Message and attach documents instead of faxing. So it's a little easier.

Has Chase gotten better since your first chargeback experience? I remember it finally ended well, but it took a few calls to get to someone who understood the situation after your DCC at Greyhound.

My experience for charge back last time for What the Pho was better, as I didn't have to explain things. It was during this charge back that I found the attach capability via secure message.

Way back at post 2, JEFFJAGUAR wrote:

It is wordsmithing like this that keeps FT on the cutting edge of travel forums!

It's been much slower in other countries. Almost all companies in the USA would process financial transactions there. There are significant exceptions elsewhere, which is why banks have been slower to introduce it.

I mentioned the situation in Australia previously ...
Amex Australia still has a "Currency Conversion Fee", not an FTF.