Jeffjaguar a signature pad may be used in Europe

Yup from the Midwest. I will wait til I return to make a fuss. So far I haven't had this issue anywhere else.

I wasn't really thinking after he denied me twice, so I ended up signing. Felt like there was nothing I could do, didn't think about making a notation until I left.

My 2016 travel starts with a brief Hong Kong adventure. Fellow thread contributor percysmith and I ate at Xiao Wang Beef Noodle at Maritime Square for lunch on January 2nd. We saw a Citibank terminal and thought we had a prime candidate for DCC. The cashier said the terminal didn't support DCC, however, and there was no verbiage on my signed receipt or customer copy. Ironically, the cashier purposefully inserted my chipped card upside down so that the read would fail and go to a fallback transaction. He said that the chip reader was broken and they were looking to replace the terminal.

I'm staying at the SkyCity Marriott near the airport. While the stay is on points, the HK$500 preauth is listed as $67.97. Using the current Visa exchange rate, the amount should be $64.52, meaning the DCC markup is 5.35%. :td: This certainly makes it among one of the highest markups I've ever seen. Fortunately, this hotel seems to respect DCC preferences. I requested HKD this time last year, and the hotel honored that request. I was even able to get a courtesy copy of the receipt to show HKD had been charged.

After lunch, percysmith and I were talking about ways to avoid being hit with DCC upon checkout from hotels. One way is to give a non-DCC card for the preauthorization at check-in. That's what I do with the Novotel in Taoyuan, Taiwan. I then inform the receptionist at checkout that I would like to use a different card. Furthermore, do not allow the hotel to tell you that they will use the card on file. Insist that you receive a signed credit card receipt plus a courtesy copy (if applicable).

I was on a shuttle back to my hotel in Ireland and I overheard an Irish couple talking about DCC and how good it was because they could save on foreign transaction fees by paying in Euros while abroad.

Sigh, I didn't want to butt in and explain how it really works. But apparently one merchant convinced them that this was the way forward.

I don't know anything about Irish cards, but outside of North America the cards tend to have currency exchange fees. These fees wouldn't be charged if you opt in to DCC. North American issuers have foreign transaction fees, which means that the fee happens regardless of the settlement currency. If the currency exchange fee is 3% and the DCC amount is 3%, it might make sense in that corner case to accept DCC. At least in the US, FTFs weren't included in the rewards calculation, but presumably the total with DCC would be. However, in practice this rarely works out since the typical DCC markup is > 3%.

The cynical part of me wonders if we should share our knowledge and let the rest of the world rot.

It's a bit like me justifying price discrimination for a capacity restricted route http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...l#post25916250 - of course I'm assuming I'm the one who can access the ex-EU fares.

At least in HK, the argument the merchant's argument won't wash as the HKMA (CFPB and Fed integrated) spent a lot of effort making merchants identify the fees levied with charging HKD overseas.

Perhaps educating the masses is the government's job, not us. We just educate each other in the know.

The problem with this approach is that I believe fighting DCC needs to reach critical mass for the brakes to be applied at non-compliant merchants. For example, some of the major chain hotels in Mainland China used to apply DCC routinely until they received many complaints. While we're vocal, I would say those complaints were more people than just the contributors on this forum. Another case would be Rainbow in HK.

There are some who refused to be educated or say, "I don't really care," but I would say the majority appreciate the education. When you explain it in terms of the merchant stands to make a profit off of your ignorance and it can cost you up to 8% more than you bargained for, people start to pay attention. (I then educate if people have cards with a FTF.) My explanation is that if you received a bill for $100 but then the waiter ran your card and it was charged $105, you would raise a fuss. Unfortunately, DCC is sneaky enough where people don't know they're being ripped off even though the markup is listed on the receipt. The two currencies and uncertainty about the exchange rate between them provides enough cover to continue the con.

I say this from the perspective of an active member of FlyerTalk who used to get hit with DCC without realizing it until 2013. Amazingly, I never got hit in Taiwan during my first couple of trips there. I think this was largely due to them generating the quote slip and proactively offering the choice of currency. Since I knew my card had a 0% FTF, I figured it was better than whatever rate they would give. I didn't know this was called DCC at the time nor how pervasive the problem was. I'm certain others could be similarly educated and brought on the bandwagon.

I forgot to add it seems DCC is Visa's illicit incentive to sign up more merchants and increase acceptance. Could be good for us if someone else is paying for it.

Pizza Express (Life Plaza Shanghai) 2 visits over 3 weeks.
HSBC machine

1st visit - was given RMB/USD slip, so I asked to be charged in RMB only. Staff re-swiped and printed a separate RMB slip to show me and assure me - but I still was asked to sign the original DCC slip. Odd but checked my Chase account and sure enough, temp charge of DCC amount posted in the correct RMB converted amount.

2nd visit - handed card while asking for RMB charge, saw the same RMB/USD slip and signed and circled RMB thinking it would be the same as before. WRONG. DCC amount posted.

I disputed with Chase and again explained my case and how I wanted them to resolve it (help me go after the vendor) as this horribly inconsistent system really makes me want to toss the card in the drawer and use my Amex in the future. This time instead of an immediate adjustment, they took a few days to look into it. At the end they still did the adjustment, but this time even gave me a call (which i happened to miss since i'm abroad). I kind of wish I had gotten the call so I could ask the details of how they resolved it, if they pursued the vendor.

Next time, I guess.

Visa does not want to allow this. They've made that clear. They were sued by a "consumer" protection organisation for violating consumers supposed right to competition and choice in exchange rates, in Australia. They allow DCC everywhere because they'll get sued by one of these groups (which actually exist to protect small business interests, not consumers) if they don't.

American Express doesn't allow it because it'd be hard to argue they're a monopoly and generally they protect their consumers. But at the same time most of their cards charge their own FTF which isn't much better.

Discover is confusing. No FTF. Generally very consumer-friendly. Many reports of places that DCC everything but Discover. But at the same time Discover does not ban DCC and does NOT require the cardholder be offered a choice of currencies. PayPal force-DCCs Discover, as I learned the hard way.

They officially don't, but they look the other way when acquirers game the system.

ACCC's actions are misguided - they seem to think setting up the credit card equivalent of the 2000-2001 California electricity crisis is preferable to rate regulation.

And the BoCs and Global Payments are playing the part of Enrons. Wonder if they call their terminals Death Stars and the whack-a-mole firmware Perpetual Loops.

It's not competition when you set up only one alternate forex supplier to Visa/MC for the exchange rate, and that supplier has a conflict of interest because it is either the acquirer or the acquirer's sole partner!

The ACCC's counterpart in Hong Kong (if we can call it that) ended up recommending officially that "consumers are otherwise advised to spend in the trader’s local currency which usually results in less transaction fees" https://www.consumer.org.hk/ws_en/ne...tion-fees.html

If Visa/MC (I tend to think MC is better than Visa on this given they offer "no questions asked" chargeback of DCC and also better response to my correspondence with them) then probably they should allow an interface to let any foreign exchange business participate and display the best [six] rates on the terminal display for cardholder selection.

The way Visa/MC set up the alternate choice now is seriously acquirer-friendly while providing them with antitrust cover. If this setup isn't designed to increase acceptance I'll eat my hat the cards in my wallet.

Does JCB attempt to DCC? I have a US JCB Marukai card now and was wondering about if they do that overseas...

To my knowledge, Discover or its partner networks don't support it, so you won't encounter this at the retail point of sale. PayPal is a special case where they're forcing you to use their bad exchange rate. Absent guidance or rules from the payment networks regarding settlement currency, PayPal can get away with this behavior.

All right, Bank of East Asia is now in the forced-DCC game in China.

Ate at EQ (some kind of Danish cafe chain?) in Shanghai, used my AA card to pay. Insert card, terminal goes online, I know I'm in for a tough time when the slip prints out unusually long. Surprise, surprise, 3.5% DCC markup. I have her void and do it again, she selects "东亚银行DCC" before inserting the card, watch the terminal, no "INQUIRY" screen, it proceeds pretty much the way I expect a non-DCC transaction to go except it says "联机成功" instead of "交易成功" before printing the slip. Have her try again but select "中国银联3.0" instead of BEA, it errors out. The only clue you'll get that you're being DCCed before the slip comes out will only happen on a PIN-preferring card: when I used my TD card, it displayed the C$ amount on the merchant side when it prompted me to enter the PIN. At this point I just went ahead and took the loss because there was a line forming behind me and only one person at the till.

I was hoping they'd stay above this (back when they were the acquirer for Carl's Jr. they would prompt you to choose your preferred currency on the PIN pad), but obviously they saw there was money to be made in forcing DCC instead of letting the customer choose.