I'm trying to come up with an appropriate (esp for an ambassador) nickname for that company.

Global Ransom?
Global Extortion?

I had problems with that company outside Taiwan - Hong Kong and the Maldives...

5.45% must be a record. But if the choice is involuntary and they can get away with it why should 4.x% be the limit?

Planet Payment is the acquirer at the Hong Kong SkyCity Marriott. According to what the receptionist said he charged me as a preauth, their markup is now 5.35%. I just checked my post from a year ago and it was 4.4%. Now, I never saw the receipt this time, so I can't tell for certain. However, I will be able to confirm within a week what the markup is. As I remember, I hadn't seen anything north of 5% a year ago.

Things with DCC have gone from a 'reasonable' - and I use this term loosely - ~ 3% markup (sometimes under 3%) 10 years ago to more than 5% today. In the case of US cards, there were few 0-1% cards back then, so at the time it might have been advantageous to accept DCC if the fee were under 3% and your card had a currency exchange fee. You didn't get rewards on the exchange fees, so if you wanted to use your hotel affinity card it would make sense to bill in USD to maximize the rewards.

However, most issuers stateside switched to foreign transaction fees. The transaction occurs in USD? Doesn't matter. You still get hit with the 3% fee. (Many of us have been stung by this by booking tickets through the website of a foreign airline. Things would price in USD natively, and no currency conversion happened. However, the transaction would post with a 3% FTF.) After the change to FTF, DCC ceased to be a good deal in pretty much every possible circumstance. The only exception is perhaps someone on an expense account reconciling exchange rates. However, most businesses I know go by the interbank rate with perhaps a little leeway in favor of the employee, and you'd have trouble passing off an unnecessary 5%+ extra expense. There have been stories on here of people being on the hook for €50 after willingly accepting DCC.

When does this cross over and become extortion? If you're getting a 5.45% DCC + 3% FTF, you're bound to notice the discrepancy with your billing statement. When do you say enough is enough? If it becomes harder to dodge the scam like in Mainland China or India, it might incentivize people to pay using cash or cash cards. (Many times in Taiwan or HK I use my EasyCard or Octopus, respectively.) Why waste the time arguing a DCC battle for some spending that might total $100 in a week? Even with a 2x category bonus, that's 200 miles or points which amounts to $4 of rewards in the most generous of valuations. In these cases, even if you dispute the difference, the issuer will not begin a chargeback and likely issue a courtesy credit. The result is that the merchant and acquirer are never punished for non-compliant behavior.

Personally, I've already modified my behavior in DCC rampant locations with non-universal compliance like in Hong Kong. I use an Octopus card (funded with cash from a 0% FTF debit card) for all small purchases for which I would use a credit card back home or in a place where DCC is uncommon (Australia or Canada). This is the opposite of what Visa and MasterCard want, but I'm left with little recourse as I want to save my principled fight for those cases that will actually affect positive change by forcing a currency code chargeback: hotels, department stores, and restaurant bills where the discrepancy amounts to something where the issuer will not simply issue a courtesy credit.

+1 I make much greater use of cash and of an AmEx card that relatively recently dropped FTF.

It would be interesting to know where the threshold lies. My only two disputes were for amounts under 5 USD and on both occasions Chase just issued a credit. Any data points for cases where a card issuer has gone to the trouble to charge back?

Disputing DCC Transactions
 

I've just had a couple of infuriating experiences on AirBnB and eBay where I wasn't even asked what currency I would like to pay in and just forced to use their DCC. When I was buying something on eBay, everything showed up in CAD and it wasn't until I looked on my credit card bill that I discovered I was charged in USD at their ripoff rate. Does anyone have any experiences disputing these charges? Would they actually go back and process your charge in the correct currency or would they just pull the money back from the AirBnB host/eBay seller and/or ban me from further activity on their site until I agree to the charge at their ripoff DCC rates?

Slightly OT, but having seen how sketchy some of the salespeople who work for the acquirers are, I totally get why products like Square are extremely popular. Sure, they don't provide the best rates (especially if most of the cards you see are debit cards), but their pricing is easy to understand and the hardware/software is straightforward as well. You also don't get locked into a long-term contract if you decide another card acceptance product works better for your business.

Unfortunately those are a lot less commonly offered outside the US, so foreign merchants are generally stuck with whatever their bank offers. Even if that means DCC is enabled by default and not easily bypassed.

I contacted AirBnB after being forced to have DCC (there was no option to opt out). They sent me a £10 voucher but refused the refund the difference. Haven't booked with them since, so the voucher was useful. What they did tell me was to select the country of the currency I wish to pay in as my country of residence. :rolleyes:

eBay's PayPal integration is very simple to opt out, you just have to notice where the link is.

I would say the amount is somewhere around $4-5, possibly a bit more. Certainly something like a $1000 hotel bill would have an easier time being disputed. Fellow member cxua successfully got a 76 code chargeback against Greyhound Cafe - after an initial suggestion by Chase to do a courtesy credit. As a test, percysmith and I tried to disable DCC but were unsuccessful and needed to void the transactions.

HSBC HK won't chargeback DCC around US$100 http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...w.php?id=12533 - just courtesy credit.

I frequently saw rates between 5.25% and 5.45% on slips where I successfully rejected DCC during my recent trip. Always written in very small text as FIVE PT. FOUR FIVE PERCENT, presumably because figures would too likely to jump out.

I just had a 98,275 KRW charge post to my Visa card as 82.07 USD. The DCC charge that I rejected would have been 87.25 USD. That would have been a stonking 6.31% premium. Hotels (this was a Hyatt) seem to be the greediest of all.

I think the thing is, as long as they're getting away with forcing DCC, why wouldn't they make it higher? I expect to see 8-10% ultimately become the norm, maybe even higher.

I have no doubt that they'll try to get away with as much as they can, but won't there be a a breaking point? When DCC was < 3% there was enough uncertainty to go mostly undetected. Before I was aware of what was happening I would think, "Maybe my bank wasn't using the most competitive exchange rate?" (I didn't know the rate was centralized with Visa and MasterCard.) The transaction value also might have also been low enough where the DCC markup in absolute terms amounts to < $0.50. (Think DCC at Burger King in Ireland.)

In the case of 10% DCC do you think people will still accept that, especially on larger purchases like hotel bills or nice restaurants? If the transaction posts for $100 more than your estimate for the exchange rate, that's well outside the margin of error. Even if unaware of DCC, do people really not check the exchange rate?

I think there are lots of people who have no idea what the exchange rate is and who just show up at the airport kiosk and go "here's $500, please give me local currency" then start spending it. I imagine it's even worse with people who only travel with credit cards. "Oh, I guess this £235 is actually $390, because that's what this slip says."

I also think that people are naive enough to believe that there is some regulation here and that the DCC rate has to be close to what they'd be charged without DCC, which we all know is not true.

I have heard online that you can get that disabled over the phone but not all CRs are knowledgeable.

And just getting back to this one:

I tried having the cashier press "cancel" at various points in the transaction, including when the terminal prompts for the PIN and the converted amount is shown on the terminal. It either backed out of the transaction with a "please remove IC card" or, when pressing "cancel" on the converted amount, just flashed the word "CANCEL" and then backed out of the transaction completely. Looks like BEA is the new HSBC.

(HT Majuki) lucky got DCCed by Hilton Queenstown

http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...nversion-scam/
And they wrote him back a boneheaded response http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...cy-conversion/

This is definitely a Visa Reason Code 76/MC chargeback Reason Code 4846 case. We can't tell which card lucky used

The only thing to add is the appropriate rate to use is the Visa exchange rate calculator http://usa.visa.com/personal/card-be...calculator.jsp or Mastercard currency conversion tool https://www.mastercard.com/global/currencyconversion . Xe.com gives the bank some scope to drag their feet.