The bigger problem with DCC as compared to CCF with regard to a possible class action is that in the case of DCC, there are thousands of infringing parties (as opposed to 3 or 4 in the case of CCF). Furthermore, I imagine the companies like Bank of China would simply ignore any judgments against them.

I just had a prepaid charge by InterContinental Hyde Park on my Chase IHG card, being recently converted from Visa to MC. Just called Chase, confirmed it was a GBP transaction.

The transaction date is Apr 9, the posting date is Apr 11. Does someone know which date's conversion rate will Mastercard use on this one? Since my card is a USD card, the transaction happened in UK, which date will it use, US date or UK date? 8 hours can make it jump into another day.

9a EDT

So it will use the conversion rate at the most recent 9 am EDT, right? Is it because I use a US card?

Also, does the transaction date matter or posting date matter when quoting the rate?

From my experience, it's not consistent even during a posting day.

I ran two transactions on two different cards of identical amount within seconds of other with same merchant <-- same rate

I then took one of the cards for lunch a little later <-- slightly different rate, even though same posting date

So I think the rates posted in https://www.mastercard.com/global/cu...ion/index.html and http://www.visaeurope.com/en/cardhol...nge_rates.aspx
are indicative not conclusive. You can't get the exact rate stipulated on those pages, but from my experience and statement analysis, you won't go far from them either (you'll be within 0.10% of them, worse if your transaction is larger in my experience).

We in HK also kept a running thread of what our banks charged us for foreign currency, and the spread over the HK Association of Banks' rate that day http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...ow.php?id=3939

I totally agree with you that it fluctuates a lot.

I wasn't expecting the GBP to USD rate to change this big during two days.

From MC:

4/9 1.67640096829
4/11 1.67189971277

From Visa:

4/9 1.674200
4/11 1.682000

4/9 is the transaction date, 4/11 is the posting date.

Mine was 1916 GBP to 3223 USD, so I assume it is a Visa transaction using the rate of 4/11, the posting date, not the transaction date, which is quite confusing. Why it doesn't use the rate of the transaction date, since the transaction happens on that date?

Also interesting, even though my IHG card has become MC, I still used the Visa card numbers (which is said to be invalid in a month) for this transaction. It's like two numbers are linking to the same account. Looks like when I used the Visa number, I got the rate of Visa. If I was using the MC number, I don't know, maybe I could save a few bucks, as the MC rate on 4/11 is cheaper?

I checked out xe.com and those rates are higher than what they list as the "official" rate. Something seems fishy with those rates. Were those the rates that appeared on your credit card statement (US banks are required to show the rate being applied on each individual transaction).

According to xe.con, on 09 April 2014 the GBP/USD rate was 1.6750359320

On 11 April 2014, the rate was 1.6735449485

I don't know where visa is getting its information from.

I've done xe.com before. Seems like xe.com shows you a real "medium" price that is unrealistic when you convert one currency to another. Anywhere you buy another currency, you will lose something.

To my experience, the rates on Visa is so much better than banks. For example, in Feb I did some ATMs in Seoul just to find out how exchange rates work. I checked Visa, 10000 equals 58.16 rmb. Then I used my UnionPay debit card without foreign transaction fee, withdraw 10000 won, spent 58.58 rmb (so the UnionPay rate is 1% higher than Visa rate). The xe.com rate (Google rate is almost the same?) is 58.10. That's why I've been quite happy with the Visa rates.

If you go to a bank in China to get 10000 won, it would cost almost 59 rmb.

My questions lies why Visa used the posting date's rate, not the transaction date's rate. I figure using the transactions date's rate would be more justifiable, even though rates can always go both ways.

The statement hasn't been out, and Chase.com is not as clear as Discover.com where it give you all the details of a transaction in the "recent transaction" page, whereas with Chase you need to wait for the statement to see all of these. 15 more days to go.

The date the FX rate applies is the "settlement date", which is the date on which the merchants processor is paid by the issuing bank processor. Many people, including here, offer precise dates on which that takes place, but in fact there is no precise date because time lags can happen between merchant, merchant processor, network transmission, issuing bank processor (if applicable) and issuing bank. Usually all that happens very quickly, often in a single day or two, but not always and not consistently. Time zones, cutoff times, holidays and other factors intervene to reduce consistency.

Even so, as you observe, credit card FX rates, assuming no DCC and no FTF, are virtually always far better than a consumer can get elsewhere. Ditto for debit cards. Between Visa, MC, Discover and American Express different procedures apply. Discover does almost all theirs through a large bank, Royal Bank of Canada, IIRC, while American Express does their own in many countries and use local partners in a few of them. Visa and MC have long standing procedures that generally are quite consumer-favorable. Still everyone makes money in this process. There are exceptions: for example, Argentina has horrible rates because the central Bank sets an artificially low rate for all official transactions, thus almost all regular travellers use cash that they buy through an unofficial market. Those exceptions are not common these days.

I got DCC'd again 2 days ago in Glasgow Scotland. I took a tour of Loch Ness and the Scottish Highlands that was supposed to be for 40 GBP ($67.19 USD). They took my credit card over the phone (the driver called his tour office with my CC#) to pay for the tour & I discovered today they charged me $70.42 USD (41.92 GBP), an overcharge of nearly 2 GBP or $3.23. I called CapitalOne and they saw it was a USD/DCC transaction & gave me a courtesy refund of the $3.23 difference, however the CSR decided it would be best to still file a dispute as they should not have charged me USD via DCC without asking my permission. I'm guessing the tour office worker just automatically accepted the DCC without much thought or simply out of habit, resulting in this overcharge. It's very frustrating that these types of shady transactions are allowed to happen & disputing them can be such a hassle.

I wonder how common a practice this is i.e. on phone or on line orders to perform a dcc transaction without asking. And I would wager that most customers don't know the difference or are even grateful that they are charged in their own currency. Do remember the people here on this board are somewhat more sophisticated and in tune with what is going on in the travel industry.

I'm guessing that about 90% of tourists have no idea they are being scammed for an additional 3-4% by DCC and probably think it's great that they get to pay in their home currency (hence the reason the "forced" DCC practice continues with little pushback from Visa/MC, since few complain).

For Japan, buying stuff online, over the phone, or even face-to-face merchant transactions do not do DCCs...at least for now.

One exception that I've come across DCC is when trying to buy something from Amazon Japan. Close to the end of the check out process, when it recognizes that you're using a non-Japanese credit card, it defaults to a view of the checkout price in your home countries' currency, with a tiny mark stating that you'd like to revert back to JPY. That's the DCC on Amazon Japan.

I'd show a screenshot of it, but I don't plan on buying anything from Amazon Japan at this time.

By my calculation, you were scammed for about 4.8% = (70.42-67.19)/67.19, assuming your currency conversion from GBP 40 to $67.19 was correct for that day. That seems typical of the many reports here (and, by the way, higher than even the AMEX 2.7% FTF).

I don't recall if I was given a choice the one time I was DCCed at a hotel a few years ago, but I probably thought, "Oh, that's nice. They converted to dollars for me." Ignorance is bliss...

I'm just glad my Lloyds Amex has no foreign transaction fees because DCC is starting to become a pain in the US, especially at restaurants where one or two even apply DCC after adding the tip.