Costa Coffee being as high-end as it is, that kinda surprises me. I was going to say I remember using my Bluebird to pay at one just fine, but that was in China.

Speaking of which, it's starting to worry me that my only no-FTF AmEx is a Bluebird card. On the other hand, I don't want to change my Costco card or apply for a new AmEx CC. I wish issuers in the US did multi-currency cards like in China- if I could get a card that was coded in US$/C$/€/£/JP¥/etc at once this wouldn't be such a pain. ICBC offers a ten-currency MC but they won't let me convert my single-currency UnionPay CC- I have to apply for a new one and I know exactly how well that'll go over without solid proof of income in China. The other problem is that their rewards scheme sucks.

I'm wondering: Does DCC pop up when card holders from the USA, Panama, Bermuda and the Bahamas use their cards in each of these other countries? Or is the system smart enough to automatically not DCC because everyone knows the four currencies are actually the same, pegged 1:1.?

I experienced a new breed of DCC upon checking out of my hotel in Shenzhen last week. When I review my expenses later today, I will try to send images to Percy Smith so he can sanitize and post here.

But, here's the quick summary:

1) acquiring bank = 建行
2) hotel = Green Tree Alliance, Sea World
3) the charge was presented to me in CNY (i.e. no USD option at all)
4) AFTER signing, I was given a second receipt advising me that DCC had been offered (and accepted!)
5) the amount that posted initially was based on Visa's (good) fx rate, but 3 days later this was replaced with a new amount based on 建行's exchange rate (3.1% mark up)

This was really easy to fix with my bank because the non-DCC amount was tracked in their system.

Reading a DCC manual for merchants - looks quite compliant and warns of card association audit http://www.elavon.ie/welcome/~/media...g%20Manual.pdf

Does anyone run DCC in Panama, Bermuda or the Bahamas? Quick Google search suggests no DCC providers in those places yet (but a Bahamas CC can be DCCed by Elavon per its manual).

Also what currency do their credit card terminals use? Local currency or USD (like Cambodia)?

Loosely tied currencies like MOP-HKD, HKD-USD certainly can and frequently will be DCCed, but they're not a 1:1 link.

This is a pretty good one! Says heaps about this bank's ethics.

I haven't heard reports of DCC being common in those locations, but you never know. It happens in Macau for HK issued credit cards, and the Pataca is a fixed exchanged rate with HKD (1 HKD = 1.03 MOP). You can extrapolate to the USD:HKD exchange rate too since that is more or less pegged. There should be no reason to lock in the exchange rate because it's not going anywhere.

I imagine charges in such places would be subject to foreign transaction fees if the card has a FTF even if prices were denominated in USD. If a FTF will be levied anyway, why does it ever make sense to accept DCC? :D

I like how one of the first things the manual says is that it provides the cardholder with CHOICE. :p

hahahahahaha....

Benefits You...
• Reduced disputes and chargebacks

Cardholder Benefits...
• Very competitive exchange backed by Elavon’s Best Rate Guarantee, no “exchange rate surprises”
• Dual currencies printed on their card receipt
• Their card issuing bank should not apply any additional fees

Yes. I was simply amazed. I will try to email you pictures of both receipts during our 午休 (afternoon nap period) today.

Are you a foreigner working in China? How did you get your current ICBC card?

I am interested in this card too. I wonder whether they actually have 10 currencies, so you always are local when in different countries, or they just convert the other 9 currencies to say, USD without charging you the 1%.

Dude, you got the same thing I got a few months ago. I had a post about this, but I couldn't find it.

Anyway, it was a 建行 machines too. The amount was shown in CNY, and there is a un-ticked tick box under, with "Accepted" on the side. One would assume the DCC was not accepted, but it was.

But yours is more unique that DCC happens on the second slip. Mine was on the same slip, with rate, USD amount and everything in very small print at the bottom.

Don't forget, 建行 rhyme with the Chinese word ".....".

Also, I wouldn't try to use my foreign CC at 格林豪泰...

No. This was a complete first for me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered posting here. While the fact that 建行 sucks has been well established, they've reached a new low in this case because they don't event bother to present the facade that a choice is available. By the way, I usually pay cash when staying at the GTA-Sea World, but since are no ATMs close by, and I had a flight to catch, I had to use my CC to settle the bill.

I guess I'm going to have to photograph all of the receipts if I make it to China. Wouldn't this be ripe territory for a chargeback since the merchant would be unable to produce a receipt that indicated anything except CNY had been charged?

It is, but that's assuming:

1. the cardholder complains about it
2. (if cardholder comes from burden-of-proof on cardholder jurisdiction like HK or Singapore) the cardholder has the foreknowledge to go photo a CCB slip even if no verbage is present, or go gets the signed slip back from the cashier for photo-taking
3. the issuer follows through on the chargeback instead of paying it out of pocket.

Certainly, if no local compliance audit from Visa/MC, CCB will be financially motivated to DCC with no opt-out and as much deceit as possible. CCB owes no loyalty to cardholders.

I rarely go the charge back route, but I did so in this case because I was shocked beyond belief.

Net result:

1) I gain $7 (at an opportunity cost of 30 minutes on the phone)
2) CCB spends $50 to sort things out
3) Merchant no longer has my money (they will get it eventually)
4) CCB is okay with the occasional $50 waste of time because very few people notice DCC, and even fewer are willing to make a stink out of $7

I don't care if it's 10 cents for 30 minutes, I will still dispute it. My hope is that once more people become aware of the DCC scam that more people will fight it. It's amusing to watch how people behave when they feel like they have gotten cheated. Most will go to great lengths to fight back even if it means giving up more than the dollar value in time, effort, and cost to do it.

Same motivation for me to chargeback DCC:

Well, my experience is actually the same as yours, that CCB is getting even worse than BoComm as it uses deceptive ways to disguise DCC and get you at last.

How exactly did this work
So you had a pending charge with the visa rate but the charge that posted was totally different? Or did the visa rate charge officially post, get refunded and re charged again under DCC? If the first scenario held true, then how did your bank believe you , because we all know that "pending.charges are subject to change" ???

I think it was the first scenario. They authorized the official Visa rate but later changed that to the crappy DCC rate, so the bank realized that he had been DCCed. He just had to prove that he didn't agree to it.

Correct.

Smart bank which one is it? And, how exactly did it get to their attention? Because again, most banks don't go off of pending charge data because they all say "a charge in pending status is subject to change??

And perhaps the most important question
It's such an elaborate scan that it's not to figure out.
How did you (the client) figure out what had happened? Did you have a receipt that showed the DCC amount? If it were me I would have probably thought that the rate just dramatically jumped? Did you have some warning? (I am just trying to find out more information so that I make sure I don't fall victim to something similar in my travels? Thanks for posting the scenario by the way! (useful information as always)

Wouldn't it be quite obvious to see that the hold was submitted in local currency but then the actual transaction had been submitted in the card's native currency?

First off, the reason I say "solid proof of income" would be an issue is because I'm a student. I make some money on the side, but nothing full-time. I got my card because the school I went to had an agreement with ICBC to issue single-currency UnionPay CCs with low limits (mine started out at 10RMB, yes, 10, and was slowly bumped up to 2000RMB before being reduced to 1400 when I stopped regularly using it after returning to the US) to international students. They stopped doing that right after I left.

ICBC customer service said I'd never lose my CC so long as I remained current on it, but a straight conversion to a multi-currency card wasn't doable-I'd have to apply for a new card. I want the multi-currency one because the ad says I would have the option of repaying my bill in the transaction currency or in RMB at the bank's rate, implying that they don't convert to US$ beforehand. But unlike with US issuers, they want proof I'd been paying into 社保, proof that I own property (probably as collateral), or proof of employment.

It is against Visa and MC regs to charge DCC without accepting it, so the bank just refunded him out of pocket (correct me if I'm wrong.) Pending charges are subject to change, but I'm assuming Moondog contacted them and told them what happened. It seems that the second receipt he got showed the DCC amount and the exchange rate. They used to do it on the first receipt, but it sounds like they are trying to be even sneakier than before. The merchants won't tell you, and if you ask they might be confused and say "we are charging in RMB, what else would we charge in". Most merchants don't really know about DCC. Just be vigilant and look at the receipt. If worse comes to worse, just write on the receipt "local currecny not offered" and take a picture and call your bank. Sorry for the long-winded explanation.

Well now I understand your situation. Yes I think getting a credit card in China is much harder than doing so in the US. In US you simply need a good credit score. I on the other hand, am the top tier ICBC customer (tier 7) but couldn't get that 10 currency card. They denied my application.

I am still not sure this ten currency card is actually a 10 currency card. A lot of CC in China eats the 1% fee and call their cards multi currency cards. If this ICBC card does have 10 currency, we would be using local currencies in these ten countries. Anyone with he experience?

Also, you went to 语言学院?

I bank with Schwab because they are generally awesome (though OT, they have attempted to send my new debit card TWICE to my Nanning office via USPS, in spite of my advice to the contrary; FedEx is now in the works).

I brought the issue at hand to THEIR attention shortly after I left the hotel because I knew that DCC was in the works.

Schwab asked me to wait 3 days until the charge posted. I did, it was 3.1% higher than what had been initially approved, and I contested it.

So you are a debit only user? Schwab bank doesn't issue credit cards to my knowledge.

When I signed up, they did, and their CC was really great (2% CASH back across the board).

Now, I only have a debit card from them, which I use mainly at ATMs, but on occasion I settle bills with it as well.

上海交通大学, not a language school (would ICBC even agree to do that with a language school? Supposedly it was that studying at a big name school guarantees a certain measure of future income so they agreed to it). I did fine for the first couple years but engineering classes in Chinese were too much for me do I ended up returning to the US.

Also, I know what you mean- 建行 tried to get me to sign up for a secured one of those (put down 12000RMB in term deposit, get card with 10000RMB limit). "multi-currency" but settles everything to USD then RMB at their rate with no option of paying the bill in the transaction currency directly. I told them where they could shove that offer (I already have a CSP- it earns better rewards too)

Which is nice in that I'm don't need to maintain minimum balances to get free overseas ATM withdrawals and stuff like that. My bank in Nashville even refunds ATM charges same-day instead of end-of-month like Schwab.

I suggest the smarter thing to do would be to create a downloadable fax template link onto the wiki so that anyone could use it to semi-automate the process.

The reason why majority of the people don't bother doing it is because what you stated: "it's only few cents and I have to bother with them on the phone for 30 minutes." I admire the principle of your not giving in, but let's face it, most people aren't going to spend 30 minutes on the phone with a clueless CSR who doesn't understand jack about DCC to resolve 10 cents.

Since you're a Millennial as myself, I'm hoping that you'd understand the natural vibe we all have in our generation: "there is always a better, more efficient way to do this using technology at hand today."

It is a futile attempt to convince people to dispute 10 cents or whatever on the phone for 30 minutes. Some people are extroverts, some are introverts.

The next best thing to do then, is to make it easier to file a DCC dispute so we don't have to deal with irritated customers behind us through the language barrier or wasting our time on the phone with CSRs. And that can be done by semi-automating it with a downloadable fax template (I suggest Google Docs as I did) and post a link to the wiki, so that all it takes is less than a minute of filling in that sheet and faxing it in to your bank (suggest internet fax like faxzero or whatever), more people will start doing it.

And the stack of faxes start piling up at the banks so they also start to visually see what a problem this is. Make it easier to file a DCC dispute for us, let the banks deal with the problem. We shouldn't be put into the position of dealing with the hassle of speaking to a clueless CSR in the first place.


Before creating a template, we need to what fields should be placed into that template:

1. Your name
2. Your address
3. Your account number
4. Date of transaction
5. Where transaction took place
6. Amount in dispute
7. scanned/smartphone camera copy of receipt
8. anything else?

A list of customer service fax numbers to big name banks which majority of the people tend to use (BofA, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, etc.) would also help.

I can create a something that makes DCC disputes more turnkey. I want to include words like Reason Code 76 for Visa so the issuer doesn't simply issue a credit. I could make a flowchart as not all banks have the same dispute process. I know Chase mails forms for instance. When dealing with frontline CSRs the best approach is to say you were overcharged when filing a dispute. Then if they don't issue an immediate statement credit you can figure out how to proceed.

About no-fee debit cards, Fidelity also reimburses ATM operator surcharges as transactions post, not at the end of the month. It's been a great money saver for the 5.5 years that I've had the card. ^

Your idea is a good one, why don't you help us make it a reality?

I'd love to help out, but unfortunately, I don't have experience in filing a DCC complaint so I wouldn't know what relevant fields are necessary to file a complaint. Hence my questions whether those 8 fields are enough or if I missed anything else that might be relevant.

As it stands today, the DCC scam for me is that I probably have been DCCed in the past in places like India or Europe, but that was over 3-4 years ago, I wasn't aware of this DCC scam back then, and the receipts have been shredded long ago and it's probably in a landfill somewhere by now. Had I known about this DCC scam way back then, I would've complained and gained the experience to help you guys out on creating an easier template (and know what info is relevant).

But my travel patterns has changed since 3-4 years ago. Most of my travels now are mainly to Japan which fortunately, do not use DCC (apart from Amazon Japan which I can avoid easily by not clicking on choosing to be charged in USD) so I don't really experience these DCC issues today.


Bluntly, I haven't been DCCed in recent times yet (most likely have been DCCed in the past which I didn't pay much attention to back then) and therefore haven't filed any dispute about it, therefore I have no experience in filing a dispute or what info is relevant to do so

So I'd think those who frequent here where the issue seems to be happening more in Europe and mainland China, I'm sure they'll understand the hassles of filing a DCC dispute better than I do, so they have a better idea of what info fields are relevant versus someone like me who hasn't been DCCed or ever filed a dispute yet.

Japan probably has a DCC scam of some sort going on but my guess is you speak Japanese and therefore you don't experience DCC . I would guess the same principle applies to someone "native" to a country
Example
My native country is Russia and therefore I don't tend to get dcced or else I could easily tell people to 're charge me if ever I had that issue there You have to remember that most low level store clerks tend to believe that they are doing a customer a "favor" by billing people directly in their home currency for "convenience" sake with little regard for the bad conversion rate

Saw non-compliant DCC today as Isaac's Hostel in Dublin. Not too bad as the choice was in the cardholder's hands (and expecting worse I'd already asked for Euro when inserting my card). Instead of asking me to choose an amount it said:

Amount
US Dollar $24.xx (I forgot the exact amount)
No / Yes

Thus it didn't present a choice of currency it instead asked if the amount was okay. Which doesn't imply a choice. Hitting no put it through in euro with a DCC-free signature slip and final slip.

Not too awful but easy to slip up since it isn't an active choice.

Likewise, I haven't been forcibly hit with DCC since I became aware of it a few years ago. I haven't yet filed a dispute with Chase because the one time I got hit with DCC at the Frankfurt Marriott in March 2013, I complained to the hotel's general manager who compensated a more valuable amount of Marriott Rewards points. I wasn't as vigilant then - you could call me DCC naive - and I thought DCC was opt-in or at the very least something where the merchant gave a transparent choice.

The only other time I got hit with DCC was July 2011 at the Venetian Macau. Again, I wasn't aware enough to know I had been hit, and it was a live and learn situation. I didn't think I had recourse at the time. If the same thing were to happen to me today I would deface the receipt and dispute the charge. I am proactive about specifying local currency up front, and not buying the lies of "Oh, that rate is just for your convenience." or thinking that the check box will be respected in China, Macau, or Hong Kong. (If you see the check box there, you've been screwed already.)

I think we can help each other out by editing the wiki with country-specific information and advice on how to disable DCC on various payment terminals.

True, but knowing Japanese also helps me to do Google searches in Japanese as well. And as of today, I find nothing on Japanese issuers or acquirers or banks in promoting DCC to face-to-face merchant environments.

And the only website that I come across where Japanese acquirers provide DCC is for online businesses (which the example screenshot looks a lot like Amazon Japan)

http://www.globalpayment.co.jp/service/service_d.php


For the most part, I think as of today, DCC doesn't happen in Japan unless one buys from Amazon Japan. And at least Amazon Japan gives you an option to choose to pay in JPY or home currency, so that's avoidable.

Of course I could be wrong and maybe American anime fans visiting Akihabara and splurging on otaku related items are getting ripped off by DCC scams. :p

But so far, this thread has shown examples mainly occuring in Europe and mainland China. Does anyone have a Japanese credit card receipt showing DCC in action in Japan? That would spark my interest in myself as well to be on the lookout when I go there.

I shop in the back streets of Akiba every now and then and have yet to encounter DCC. There's never any question- insert/swipe card, wait, slip prints out, always in yen.

As was my experience as well; everywhere I go in Japan, the receipt has always been in JPY.

As an additional side point, if one can read Japanese, even that Japanese acquirer for online businesses that I posted above doesn't really state any benefit to merchants; it only says "it'll be a service to your customers who would like to see the amount in their home currency without currency fluctuations. By providing this service, foreigners will more likely shop at your place than your competitors!"

Nothing about "businesses earn additional revenue from conversion fees" is noted in that Japanese acquirer website, which is what other countries' acquirers use to market pitch DCCs to merchants. (i.e. FirstData's DCC sales pitch to US merchants)

Either Japanese online business acquirers are trying to pocket the difference by collecting the currency fees for themselves or, Japanese online business acquirers themselves don't know what DCC is yet or haven't really looked into what it really does to market it that way to benefit Japanese merchants.

The American skeptic in me would say the former. Yet the Japanese in me wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter. I'd even say this as an American of Japanese descent - the Japanese people are really bad at marketing. They make great products, they suck at marketing. :D

I think that the prevalence of JCB makes DCC not worthwhile in Japan. Furthermore, Japan is a by-the-book culture, so you know that DCC would always be presented as a choice if it were enabled. For instance, I remember a cashier at a department store explaining the return policy to me - I had to go get one of my Japanese classmates to translate - because the department store policy was to inform customers. It was obvious that I didn't understand. How many other places in the world would a cashier bother to do something like that?

Have they initiated the chargeback, or you are still in the 3-day waiting period?

I went to 上海交通大学 once. Nice school.

Actually the 语言学院 I mentioned isn't some sort of local language school. It is quite famous now. It is located in 五道口 in Beijing, Haidian. It's like that the area with a 10-mile radius from the 语言学院 is a special economic zone, because the school is so popular among international students.