That is definitely a contributing factor. If I give my employer a DCC receipt and the amount is in GBP, I get refunded the exact amount in GBP. If I give my employer a receipt in any other currency, I get refunded in GBP at some dodgy* exchange rate my employer has created.

My credit card doesn't have one, but my employer doesn't refund non-sterling fees charged by banks, so going DCC is actually better for most people at my company.

* = After querying this with our finance people, it is apparently calculated as the average interbank exchange rate for every day in the previous month, i.e. nothing like the rate you actually paid.

In my former job, we were lucky enough to have a finance department that was sane. Whenever we had expenses in a foreign currency (roughly 95% of all our expenses) we got refunded on a very generous rate, usually being even around 1% better than what the credit card charge was. So obviously, I was always very willing to pay for the whole group when eating out :D

Are you not able to enter the amount actually charged to your card on your expenses claim? Along the lines of "ABC Hotel, invoice amount EUR 130, amount charged to my Visa 1234 GBP 96.37".

If not, I can see the attraction of DCC for anyone who is, quite reasonably, more concerned about not being out of pocket than about their employer not being out of pocket.

I'm off to Spain next month - how bad can I expect things there? Do I need to state "Euros!" at every transaction?

Spain isn't terrible... but you do need to get in the habit whenever traveling to say the local currency. I do it every time I hand over my credit card wherever I am.

That's basically what I did starting with my third day there.

I quickly learned that on some credit card terminals the interface is counter-intuitive and probably intentionally confusing in order to maximize profits for the banks and possibly the merchants. On that particular screen, the sales clerk/waiter has to touch the red button to decline the dollars option (the green button is to proceed in dollars).

I specifically instructed that if given a choice on the screen to proceed in US$, I wanted the transaction to be processed in Euros.

I would like to say that after the AMEX SPG card did away with the FTF, I've been using it like crazy both in China and Japan, and I've racked much more SPG points than before and I don't really care about other cards offering me 2% on general purchases anymore, since SPG points are valuable.
It is really a peace of mind for me and it is absolutely DCC-free. Everyone should try it.
On a side note, on a Shinkansen Kiosk at Osaka Station, I actually used my SPG Business card successfully in purchasing tickets, while all my other cards including the Chip-and-PIN A+ were rejected by the machine. I couldn't remember whether I've set up a PIN for my AMEX SPG Business, but I just used my common PIN and it was actually accepted (Chip-and-PIN ready? I don't know) and the charge shows up on AMEX as a purchase, not a cash advance.
Hope this helps.

Went to Ikea (Shanghai Hongqiao) last week, used CSP twice.

1. Cafeteria on 2nd floor
-I said nothing to the cashier when handing her the card
-The lady charged in RMB.
-No DCC or option for USD.

Resulting transaction on CSP site: No issues, no "extra" hidden charges.

2. Merchandise purchase on 1st floor.
-I said nothing to the cashier when handing her the card
-I was in a credit card only queue
-printed out a rmb or usd for me to mark and sign
-i said in a panic, i wanted RMB! She said, "then mark it" on the slip
-I did so and but was a little paranoid - even though the final receipt printed as RMB.

Resulting transaction on CSP site: I was charged a whopping 5% higher than expected! I was pissed off - mostly at myself because I read about it and knew about it, and still signed the slip. Anyway, I was about to open up a dispute with chase over this but the charge was only still pending, so I waited for it to post before officially disputing it. Oddly enough, the cafeteria charge posted in 2 days. This one however, posted in 5 days...even though they were on the same day. So anyway, to my surprise, the final posted charge actually changed and was in the correct RMB amount, no extra!

So, now I'm a little confused, because I read that regardless of what you pick, you'll be charged at the DCC rate. I guess it depends on the POS system? I'm not sure what one Ikea uses though, my receipt doesn't show any of that.

What you see as pending is what Ikea asked for authorization. The system evidently asks for authorization of the higher DCC-ed amount, but submits the actual charge.

Hello, milksteak. Welcome to FlyerTalk, and thank you for sharing your DCC experiences! As you've discovered, the pending amount depends on the POS system. Usually, it's been my experience that the DCC amount shows in the pending activity. As long as the final receipt/courtesy shows an indication of local currency, you're usually good. Be cautious when there are check boxes to ensure that your choice was actually respected. You can see an example at Disneyland HK here. Some places, notably China and India, have a terrible record when it comes to DCC. By the time you've seen the verbiage it's too late.

Hi milksteak

What you experienced is normal, but of course scary nonetheless. In China, usually the authorization is for the DCCed amount, and you can only know after it is posted.

Technically, all transactions in China can be DCC free. But some of them actually requires some actions before the transactions are logged into the payment systems (meaning the fake options on the slips are pure lies), while others are designed to be operable but neglected by the cashiers (as they have to give some inputs to the payment systems to choose the non-DCC currency, and the systems always choose the DCC one if no inputs are made to maximize profit).

In Shanghai, people follow the rules much better than people in Beijing. I've encountered much fewer forced-DCC instances there. Some places in Shanghai even don't have the DCC option at all, using POS directly linked to the UnionPay system without any evil tampering from the greedy banks.

In Beijing, if you see the "choices" on your slip, you are doomed already.

Hi zyxlsy, I thought there were some terminals that couldn't be defeated in Mainland China (or even HK/Macau)? Even if you specify RMB, have no language barrier, and have a cooperative cashier there is still a problem.

How are you Majuki? It's been long.

My experience is that almost every terminal is controllable. The problem is knowing how to control them.

For example, there was this one time with Global Payment in HK, I was presented with choices on the first carbon-copy slip on which I need to sign. Through my request, the cashier printed out a second slip confirming the currency of my choosing. This is actually the correct step that it's a two-step thing. But what if the cashier forgets to do the input? That's where the semi-forced DCC would happen because without a explicit opt-out input, the default is DCC.

In China, things are a little bit different that the opt-out mostly cannot be done afterwards, and you have to mostly use the "cancel button" trick to tell the terminal that you don't want DCC. However, some terminal here are actually designed to be handling currency selections afterwards. There might be passwords and confusing prompts which would make it very hard for not-trained-so-well employees to actually find these features but they are there anyway. But as I said, the majority of them need pre-emptive actions in order to defeat DCC.

My guess would be 90% of forced-DCC in China is from machines which need pre-emptive actions, 9% from machines with DCC opt-out features that are hidden so well, and 1% from totally insane machines with hard-wired DCC functions but I've not seen any here yet (but one can never say they don't exist).

I've been doing well. I've been stuck stateside since January, so no opportunity to check for DCC other than my sister-in-law's trip here in February - very few DCC hits in the US - and my in-laws visiting in April (no DCC encountered but very few data points with their card).

I know of the cancel trick, but that didn't work when percysmith and I tried at Greyhound Cafe last year. So, in 90% of cases if I say local currency in China I will be alright? For some reason, I thought the problem was much more widespread. I'll definitely keep my Discover at the ready to use instead.

I didn't know it was so widespread. Even though the UK gets a lot of Eurozone cards most machines are set to GBP only. And even if they have the other option since you actually insert the card into the machine and make the transaction, you control what happens.

I'd hate to have someone "help" me by giving me a crappy exchange rate with DCC. I wonder which eastern countries predominantly do DCC, I plan to go to Japan and I wonder what they do there.