To be fair, English is not the most used language in the world. Only 5.43% of the world can speak English, compared to Chinese Mandarin (14.4%) and Spanish (6.15%)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ative_speakers

So it could very well be likely that the merchant could actually not speak English, especially if said merchant is in a non-touristy part of Spain where they are less likely to see English speaking tourists.

At least Spain would be a cinch for many Americans as many have taken Spanish as their second foreign language requirement in high school (I would've chosen Chinese but it wasn't offered at my school :( ). "No dolares, en euro por favor!"

I won't argue with you and it probably is Chinese given the population of the country. But there's one word missing from your premise. And that is naitive like naitive language. I haven't looked at the Wikipedia article but I would wager my usual nickel that English is the #1 choice throughout most of the non English speaking world for choosing a second language to learn first. And there are many countries, Holland for example, where the study of English is almost mandatory in grade school. Don't most people in Japan choose English as their second language, first foreign, to learn? How about China? India? Russia?

About a decade ago, I took a tour that went through many of the Eastern European countries that had once been part of the Warsaw Pact. You know what struck me the most say in Poland. I would have thought the second language in most of the museums I visited in Warsaw would be either Russian or perhaps German. You know what it was? In every museum, every last one, the displays were always in Polish of course and in English.

Of course the clerks I refer to with the "no speak English" usually spoke perfect Englis up to the point of not doing a dcc transaction. Then suddenly there is a language problem!

Irish currency has been pegged to British currency off and on for several centuries. According to Wikipedia, the Irish pound was introduced in 1928 and was pegged at parity to sterling until 1978, when Ireland decided to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the UK decided to stay out, forcing them to end the link.

In Japan, students have to take English classes. And, those students seeking to go to college also need to pass a language exam. Most Japanese students don't really retain enough English to come near conversational fluency, though.

(I taught English in Japan for the Japanese government years ago).

You might want to reread that wiki article. It has nothing to do with people who can speak the languages in question.

Good to know, thanks! I was born a fair bit after 1978, so my childhood memories of punts were that they were worth a lot less :)

I tried to dispute a charge made in HKG duty free. Chase wouldn't process the dispute saying, "we do not control the way the merchant billed your account even though you opted to be charged in HKD."

Ouch (糟糕)! I hope you escalate this during a slow day at work.

Did you follow the suggested procedure at the duty free shop i.e. asking the transaction be voided and done properly in HK dollars and if they refused, cross out the statement on the slip given to you to sign saying you were offered the opportunity to pay in HK$, circle the amount in HK$ and write local option not offered. Then you dispute the charge as not being authorized and demand to see the signed merchant copy which they will be unable to produce. I don't see where Chase has any choice but to charge back the sale to the visa (or mastercard) system under visa or mc rules.

Yep. Every Japanese takes six years of English during middle school and high school. Of course, Japan being mainly a homogeneous society where English language use is hardly ever used in society, a vast majority of them do not retain English. Furthermore, most of the emphasis on English is learning/memorizing vocabulary and grammatical writing, but not in spoken context. And the only use of English during those six years is for only that subject course in middle school and high school. When you put it like that, "learning English and using it" is a very small fraction of everyday Japanese life. Every other subject from math to history to science, to everyday shopping and commuting, watching TV and surfing online is all done in Japanese. English doesn't get retained when 99.999% of everyday Japanese life by an average Japanese person can be done solely with Japanese.

Only those who have an interest in them or want to study abroad, or sent to an English speaking country as an expat take English seriously. In sharp contrast, here in LA, studying Spanish does have some positives because you actually could use it and practice it in the real world.

It's kinda like trigonometry and calculus over here. You study it, memorize it, and pass the AP exam so you don't have to take some of the mandatory courses in your freshman year in college, but once out in the real world working in an office environment, you never really have a need to use sin/cos/tan and derivatives and you end up forgetting them.

Being able to speak a different language comes with repetition. A merchant or a clerk will be able to speak English "perfectly" because the vast majority of the English they've been using is repetitive. And what is repetitive in sales? "Yes, that's looks good on you," "try this," "this is a bargain," "Yes," "Thank you," "You're very welcome," etc. etc. etc. You repeat this hundreds of times for every English language speaking customer, anyone can say it in "perfect English." However, once you throw out something like credit card processing mumbo jumbo which I hardly expect minimum wage earning cashiers to know about let alone that's not in their repetitive dictionary in their head, they will blank out.

It's the same in any language sales. I go to Mexico, Turkey, or Thailand, and when the shop sellers look at me, they recognize me as a Japanese person and they immediately start speaking in "perfect" Japanese. "kore yasui yo!" "shachou-san! mite! mite!" "totemo niauyo!" etc. etc. Do I expect them to strike a full conversation with them in Japanese with regards to Mexican, Turkish, or Thai politics? No.

Don't get me wrong, there are many people in the world that can speak English very well. I've had a nice chat with a Jordanian taxi driver in Jordan who took me to the Dead Sea while I was there who spoke perfectly good English as he used to be a limo driver in NYC for 7 years. I've had an inn keeper in Kagoshima speak perfectly good English and Spanish as he spent his first 20 years living in Alberta and Peru as his father worked for a Japanese company with an office in Calgary and Lima.

But a vast majority of the people rarely do get to use English repetitively in their everyday lives. Learning a second language, isn't necessarily the same as understanding and being able to effectively communicate in that second language either. That, usually comes with repetition. Otherwise, it just gets put in waaaaay back in the head and sits somewhere in your head collecting dust.

Someone like me, who was born to Japanese parents in the US and have many Hispanic friends growing up in LA, would most likely grow up being a trilingual far better than the same Japanese person in Japan of my age, who had spent six years learning English in middle and high school, and yet having zero use of the English language in a homogeneous Japanese society.

Encountered ATM DCC today using a Euronet ATM in Germany. Requested 200€. Presented with DCC option with an rate of 1.52 (market rate is 1.38) or about $304USD . I selected no and let ING/CapitalOne do the conversion and it came out to $278.26. $25 difference. Highway robbery.

I was about to ask if Euronet is a bank-independent ATM network, but decided not to be so lazy and looked it up myself. And guess what - those highway robbers are headquartered in ... Kansas! Here's a wikipedia summary article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronet_Worldwide

Since Euronet (and other companies no doubt) provide outsourcing of payment processing for both ATMs and POS terminals, I wonder if some of those merchant protests that they have no control over DCC might actually be true. If Euronet gets a slice of each retail DCC transaction, and they're willing to add a 10% fee to your ATM draw, maybe they really don't give merchants a chance to control how the conversion is handled at retail POS.

Either way, I'm not paying DCC fees. I got burned once at the FRA Sheraton a few years ago, and that's the last time for that scam!

I don't know the legal ramifications of agreements between credit card processors and the card associations (mastercard, visa, amex). In the old days as a merchant you had agreements with your bank to process your credit card transaction and then agreements with Amex, Diners etc. Then the idea of signing up with a processor came along. But I do know that the operating procedures of mc and visa prohibit the use of dcc scam without permissiion of the scamee. Therefore I do not think it is legal for them to prohibit the bypassing of DCC. Of course lots of things are illegal like not accepting any valid mc or visa whether it is emv or magnetic strip on paper and the credit card associations when you complain call the merchant and say naughty naughty and then do nothing about it. And Amex prohibits DCC. (BTW does anybody know if there is any real effort to enforce this prohibition?)

A merchant cannot do DCC without the supporting fields on their POS system and processing interface. Thus nearly all ATM networks, whether ones owned by processors, MC or V, or bank-owned ones, do support DCC. the American Express processing infrastructure has no DCC capability so it is not possible to do DCC on an American Express transaction.

However, (there's always however), in some countries American Express does not handle themselves but are processed by a local entity (e.g. in Brazil there is no American Express network as such, it is Bradesco). In principle it still should be impossible to have a DCC on American Express-branded plastic in that situation, but the capability does exist in the multi-card processing systems even though it is required to be not enabled per American Express agreements. Is it possible anyway? Maybe, although I have never heard of it happening. Of course DCC is far from the only way to fleece unsuspecting consumers.:(

It also might be a good idea to have an official Association explanation of DCC as well as that of a Wiki. Here is Visa:

"What is dynamic currency conversion?
Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC), also referred to as Cardholder Preferred Currency (CPC), is a service offered by merchants – not Visa - in some countries when you are traveling abroad. If you choose to use the DCC service, the merchant will convert the purchase price of goods or services at the point of sale from the currency in which the price (i.e., the merchant's local currency) is displayed into another currency (i.e. your home currency) using an exchange rate that typically includes a service fee.

Here's an example of a DCC transaction:
A U.S. Visa cardholder is in Singapore and decides to purchase a box of chocolates priced at SGD 20. At checkout, the merchant offers the cardholder the option to pay in USD using a DCC service.

The merchant dynamically converts the SGD transaction amount to USD 15.80. The DCC transaction amount and transaction currency (in USD) are disclosed to the cardholder. An exchange rate of 0.79 (1 SGD = .79 USD), which includes a 2.5% mark up (over a wholesale exchange rate) and the 2.5% commission/fee/mark up are also disclosed to the cardholder.

The cardholder actively chooses DCC by checking a box on a printed receipt or pushing a button on an electronic screen and agrees to pay USD 15.80 for the box of chocolates using the exchange rate provided by the merchant that includes a 2.5% fee for the DCC service.

If you do not want to use DCC when making a purchase, then you have the right to refuse the offer and have your transaction billed in the merchant's local currency, which will then use Visa's conversion rate. If you did not agree to DCC, but see it on your bill, then you should ask your issuing bank to contest the charge."
http://usa.visa.com/personal/card-be...-rates-faq.jsp

Another crucial point left out of the Visa explanation and not clarified in the Wikipedia, although stated, is that DCC will NOT GIVE YOU THE PRICE YOU WILL BE CHARGED if your card issuer imposes a foreign transaction fee, because that fee will still be imposed with or without DCC. BEWARE!

Finally, if you encounter non-disclosed DCC, which can happen especially at some ATM locations, you can successfully protest with your card issuer. Such protests sometimes work and sometimes do not. In some locations, especially in China, merchants staff often do not know how to reject DCC. Some people, including me, have been successful in negotiating an additional discount adequate to cover the FX excess cost. That only works well if you've internet access and can calculate the typical prevailing rate using Oanda or some other. I have done that numerous times in various parts of China.