Note folks the statement in bold above. That is why writing local currency not offered on the charge slip should lead to a chargeback on the part of your bank (for the person who said Chase refused to charge back the dcc transaction unless the person did not write local currency not offered on the charge slip) and as a matter of interest, might be a reason (we've been arguing this back and forth) why chip and signature is better than chip and pin at least as far as refuting a dcc scammer.

Chip and PIN is, of course, much better. Not perfect, there is one case in this thread of a person who entered their PIN for a local currency transaction and THEN got DCC'd.

Chase also doesn't seem to be very customer-friendly. If you look on here, there's a case of a person who initiated a chargeback against an incorrect amount and Chase refused the chargeback on the basis they handed the card over, even though they didn't sign the authorisation slip!

Throwing a bit of an idea here:

Would you guys think it would be best for int'l travelers to be self-prepared by buying this pocket sized self-inking stamp with a note that says "DCC refused & merchant did not offer a choice"

http://www.simplystamps.com/Pocket_S...p-details.aspx

So when the merchant says "blah-blah-blah" and getting into a time wasting argument with them, all you have to do is whip this out, stamp it onto the receipt and be on your way. Now you have a receipt with that statement that you can just stamp it to show to your bank.

That way, less arguing, less wasted time in writing the whole message down with a pen. All you have to do is say "ok - fine," whip this portable stamp out, stamp it to both receipts and be on your merry way.

Merchants will be dumbfounded on what to do because they don't expect people to have self-inking stamps, let alone a pocket sized one that can be easily whipped out and stamped to the receipts that read "DCC refused & merchant did not offer a choice."

IANAL (I am not a lawyer) so someone with expertise could chime in a better statement that can be used for self inking stamps.

Is there a type of ink that won't smear on thermal slips?

Actually, Korea is not that bad in terms of DCC implementation.

In all restaurants I've been to in Seoul, I've never seen DCC. All transactions are done in KRW, and you sign on the pad.

In department stores (like Lotte Department, not Duty Free), you sign on the pad as well, but before that, you have the choice of currency on the pad, so not hard to control at all.

In Duty Free, the price is denominated in USD, so no DCC to worry about.

I've never been to a place where the DCC is locked, but maybe I've been away from obvious tourist traps. Mostly I go to restaurants packed with locals, not ones catering foreigners.

I have worked in Korea, actually for a credit card issuer. AFAIK, South Korea is never a DCC problem country.

I can attest that many Japanese merchants uses hanko stamps on thermal paper slips to denote who was the cashier processing the credit card.

So I would say yes there are inks that are okay with thermal paper.

I think for China/HK/Macau, the stamp is not necessary. Even BoC/HSBC/Global Payments will print the CNY/HKD/MOP tick option for the sake of conformity with the VIOR, even though their terminals are locked down. In those cases, ticking the CNY/HKD/MOP option, signing and ***taking a photo of the signed merchant slip*** (or retaining the cardholder copy of a carbon slip) will more than suffice for chargeback.

On Harrods/Galleries Lafayette slips (where the DCC selection is already made before the cashier prints the integrated sales invoice/card slip), yes some penmanship is required.

Yes, this is the part I was referring to that one should just avoid haggling and getting into an lengthy argument with them about DCC.

In instances like that, rather than waste your precious time arguing with them or taking more of your precious time to write that whole sentence out (which adds to more time and more blah-blah-blahs as you're writing it), you might as well just whip out a pocket sized stamp that says "DCC refused & merchant did not offer a choice" and get going on your merry way.

I think every FTer should have one as their necessary tools for international travel. Maybe we can ask the manufacturer to produce one that says this in mass quantities and sell it on the FT store? :D

Whether you write it out or stamp it, if it gets to that stage, you can bet on wasting a lot more time after the fact (if you choose to contest the charge).

I have never used a stamp but I have had a few situations in which an option was not given. Examples I have had are Marriott UK (they have used non-geographic telephone numbers too, a gigantic ripoff), Harrods, HSBC China ATM, St Regis Lhasa etc.

In every case I have had easy reversals. HSBC was instant (I am HSBC Premier, probably helped), Chase and Citi were both nearly instant and I did not need to provide any documentation for them.

I have no proof, but I suspect that for premium cardholders who also travel a great deal most major issuers have an almost automatic reversal of DCC.

For hotel users we might want a discussion of non-geographic numbers also. I am not an expert on this subject although I was victimised by it. Marriott, despite my then Platinum status, refused to reverse the charges for me which were roughly GBP 1000 over a three week stay. I then disputed the charge and the dispute (on a Citi issued card) worked. Do any of us know this scam well enough to offer definitive guidance?

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_0_6 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11B651 Safari/9537.53)

"I have no proof, but I suspect that for premium cardholders who also travel a great deal most major issuers have an almost automatic reversal of DCC."

That means the bank did not bother to dispute properly. My current attitude is to encourage the bank to actually dispute and give them all required documentation to do so, however if they refuse then we should still take the bank' money because it is compensation for them not doing the job properly and if they are forced to comp enough they might do something about DCC like force visa to police the system properly and get tough with chronic violators like Bank of China.

A client, a major service brand, with whom I have recently worked on dispute/chargeback processing procedures, said that for DCC the transactions processing records do have adequate information for an issuer or intermediate processor (disputes/chargebacks are sometimes handled by specialist processing contracts, especially ones that deal with ATM acquiring and/or international disputes). The records I personally have seen do show adequate native data for ATM issues, and almost always for credit cards too, but sometimes debit cards at POS are a problem due to the different transaction data streams involved.

Thus, for all conventional disputes I agree completely with your comment. For DCC specifically the discrepancy should be in the transaction history and easily accessible. In many problem case the mandated receipt data as shown in the wiki here may not be furnished, in which case the prima facie evidence favours the purchaser and the chargeback is semi-automatic because the transaction does not meet network standards.

The problem with the previous paragraph is that many processors do not have this chargeback process automated and only a couple of major processing systems actually have automated DCC violation rejection. If you want to know that fine detail send me a PM and I'll be happy to tell you which ones I know actually have this automated. The largest US card issuers have very seriously customised internal processing systems and I do not know which among them have automated DCC rejection processes. Among regional banks, credit unions and local banks virtually none have even basic DCC recognition and their common external processors often know almost nothing about it.

Nearly all major processors in what I call 'full EMV' (i.e. chip plus online pin) as applies to most cards issued around the world do have automatic DCC recognition and rejection when not accompanied by consumer authorisation. The 2017 planned migration for US issuers is likely to end out with almost all significant US issuers having automatic DCC processing too.

Sorry about this excessive amount of detail. This subject has frustrated me for years. I think it should be prohibited but merchants love it because it is so very profitable for them. Among a large merchant class we studied DCC alone accounted for almost a third of total imputed net profits for the retailer class. When margins are tight and consumers are ignorant DCC is an irresistible choice, and POS staff are either unaware or are trained deceptively. I'll make wagers that the EU consumer protection policy will somehow act to constrain major networks operating in the EU from permitting DCC on EU-issued cards. Once that happens there will be more pressure on MasterCard/Visa/JCB and ATM networks to disenable the practice.

While dealing with arcane aspects of this, in many duty-free shops around the world the US$ is the currency charged but does not usually have DCC applied. Further in some countries such as Zimbabwe all card charges will be denominated in US$ because Zimabawe no longer has a currency of it's own. In those cases there still can be foreign transaction charges just as there are in the dozen or so small countries which use the US$ as their currency or 100% back their currency with US$. IIRC none of those have DCC because they bill in US$ anyway, and DCC is less commonly used for non-US$ transactions on non US$ cards.

Sorry I can't get my head around how automated this can be.

I'm sure even the most non-compliant terminal in Shenzhen will still send the appropriate signals saying cardholder has been given a choice, authorization is duly obtained, all is compliant etc. -

it's not like issuers distribute rsa secureid-like tokens to make sure electronically that cardholder has consciously authenticated.

So the only way to really dispute is the paper. Either:

(HK/Singapore model): cardholder practically required to furnish proof what they signed before bank will start chargeback. I did one - took six weeks http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...on-45.html#675 even though the restaurant is just practically an hour's boat ride from where I live (Macau is a separate Special Administrative Region, and is treated as a foreign country as far as Hong Kong is concerned)

Rest of world model?: merchant is required to present proof cardholder opted in to DCC. Issuer bank disputes the acquirer via Visanet, acquirer informs the merchant, merchant either represents the slip - has 45 days per the VIOR - or waits for the end of the representment period and debits the amount via visanet.

In both cases there is delay and review of paper. So i don't see how automated this process can get.

As far as the hotels are concerned, many have pulled the Avis trip i.e. burying in the check in document you are pressured to sign an agreement to accept dcc. If it's in England, assuming you are from an English speaking country, it is of course in a way your fault for not reading what you're signing. However in non English speaking countries, say in Italy, how many would recognize their agreeing to be billed in their own country. The solution is to write in bold letters on the check in slip, no matter what, if it's in a language you don't understand, bill in euro (or whatever the local currency is) only. Perhaps we can produce a stamp, like a date stamp with movable bands, with all the currencies. You know Bill in (select the currency) only!