Besides applying DCC on signed card terminal slips on checkouts, I or my friends have encountered the following:

- DCC on prepaid rate (Amsterdam)

- DCC on express checkout (Shenzhen)

I'll keep a lookout for it. I don't expect to do much, if any, shopping at department stores, but I'll make sure to specify euros if shopping at El Corte Inglés.

I think I've been protected from DCC based on the properties where I've stayed. I normally stay at Marriott properties, but there are none in Taiwan. When I stay at the Sheraton Taipei I have used my AmEx Platinum, not subject to DCC. When I've stayed elsewhere on the island, my wife has booked prepaid rates through ezTravel. Since the website caters to Taiwanese - most places have asked her for her ID card - they don't participate in DCC. That leaves the Novotel as the only hotel that's caused me any worry, but I've specified and received DCC-free bills in TWD upon checkout.

Outside of hotels places either don't use DCC or have always honored the currency of my choosing (TWD). We will likely be going back sometime in April, so I can report my experiences at the Novotel since we always stay there the night before flying out.

Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) - Master Thread
 

My latest ATM in Poland prompted me if I would like a guaranteed exchange rate or an unknown exchange rate. No other information. Quite deceiving.

Boy have we got a deal for you!

To be fair, there have been reports of FX rates moving in such a manner between transaction and settlement in which the DCC rates are actually the better deal. (Of course, this is quite rare and doesn't detract from the overall business case for DCC from the institution's point of view.)

Just reminded my +1 to leave some promo spending quota on her Unionpay for trip to Macau (short notice rebooked from BKK)

Sure, there may be counterexamples, but they're few and far between. Has a fixed exchange on an ATM ever been in the customers favor though?

Aer Lingus also pulls this scam when buying tickets through their website and using a foreign card. Took me a minute to figure out what was going on when I saw the "guaranteed exchange rate" language being touted.

Is there a way to bypass DCC with Aer Lingus and force the charge in euros?

Yes - they give you a choice - they just make it sound unappealing. The default option is the DCC price but you can check a box to state that you want to pay an amount that is not a guaranteed amount. The language makes it sound like you could possibly get hit with some unknown charge but in reality it's what you should go with.

Here's another thread on the Aer Lingus Forum discussing it further:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/aer-l...ou-pay-ei.html

Word of advice to threadmaster/wikimaster:

Pictures, diagrams, or internet memes are effective tools in getting your point across without long words or paragraphs.
A scan of a DCC'ed receipt or a photo of it would help as well.

They are a lot more effective in gaining attention. :D

They're coming, but I don't have any to share that aren't already out there. I don't want to simply borrow the ones from Wikipedia or other people's posts without permission. I can put some up eventually, but the wiki was just a quick first pass when I wrote it. I will refine it over time.

If you ask Percy Smith, I'm guessing he will gladly hook you up with his collection.

I just Google Imaged myself "percysmith dcc site:flyertalk.com"

let me find some good exemplars:

DCC thermal slip: (overseas) http://loyaltylobby.com/wp-content/g...conversion.jpg
(Mainland China) http://www.hongkongcard.com/webedito...1254_76249.jpg
(Taiwan) http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t...5fd9492569.jpg
(Korea) http://www.hongkongcard.com/webedito...1152_31743.jpg (the one on the right)
DCC carbon slip: (Hong Kong) http://www.hongkongcard.com/webedito...1125_22974.jpg

DCC on express checkout: http://www.hongkongcard.com/webedito...1242_29386.jpg
DCC on prepaid rate: http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t...namsterdam.jpg

Oh can I offer this one as a relatively clear specimen?

http://www.hongkongcard.com/webedito...0135_36690.jpg

http://www.hongkongcard.com/webedito...0135_36690.jpg

But frankly, it's only one variety of many.

You might see slips like this in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand.
In UK, France, Italy and Korea, the choice is likely to be displayed and made in the POS or signing pad.

And in the prepaid/express checkout/car rental case, probably none at all.

I'd share mine if I hadn't shredded mine from my past trips abroad, but unfortunately my recent trip abroad was to Japan in which they don't pull the DCC scam. ^

Though probably somewhere down the line, I'll probably make a purchase on Amazon Japan which gives me a choice whether I'd like to pay in JPY or USD, so when I get around to buying something from Amazon Japan again, I'll send you a screenshot of it as well as the final dollar transaction amount from my credit card to show folks that choosing USD on Amazon Japan ain't worth it. :D

Sounds good. I might take one for the team too if I see DCC during my travels in the future just to compare rates.

Tried it in Sep 2010 http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...ow.php?id=4303 #2

Amazon's rate for USD/HKD for instance is > 8.0

"Applicable Exchange Rate is.
1 USD = 8.0572637507 HKD.
(includes all fees and charges)."


(HKD is pegged to USD, the normal exchange rate is 7.76 before fee and 7.91 after. So 8.057 represents about 3.8% fee collected by Amazon or it's payment processor)

Thanks for the examples! I've included them in the wiki.

Ah, HKG. OT, but for cash, I usually end up heading to the money exchangers at the Chung King Mansions. I know a guy there who pretty much does it at the 7.76-7.80 rate :D

Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) - Master Thread
 

Just got to Berlin. My lodging here didn't even give me an option and the terminal automatically selected DCC for me. I told the receptionist beforehand to charge in Euro but she wasn't helpful. I crossed out the DCC agreement and USD section and will charge back later.

I'm really hating DCC after three weeks here now. It's automatic almost everywhere.

Per chance, when you checked in, did you sign something which may have included (in German) your agreement to this hideous scam? That is one of the new ways some merchants are trying to get around the visa/mc prohibition that one can only be scammed with dcc if they agree to it. Much like the garbage Avis has been pulling.

Nope. Just handed over my passport and credit card. I told the clerk to charge in Euro and she said "we'll see if it asks." At no point did she press any buttons after the swipe.

Edit: I'll add that they're pretty hostile to CCs in general at this place. They tacked on a CC surcharge and tried to get me to pay cash several times.

Was AE an option?

I'm using Arrival/Venture points to pay for this all so it has to be one of those two. It seems every complaint I send to Barclay nets me 5000 points, so this could be profitable anyway.

Was this a relatively large hotel or a smaller Rick Steves for lack of a better term type of hotel? Was it part of a large chain (you know Marriot, Sheraton or the like?) Well actually, I don't visit German (or the Netherlands) nearly as much as I do the UK and France, but I have read that both of those countries simply have a tradition that cash is king. I mean in the UK, you can walk down most any street and merchant after merchant has credit card decals plastered in the window. It's really rare in the UK to come across merchants who don't take credit cards or really pressure you to pay cash although some are reluctant to take plastic for small purchases. Germany and the Netherlands are completely different matters.

It's simply the way it is; not that I'm trying to defend the hotel.

I was in Italy three months back where cash is king even more than the Germans but I think we used a hotel aggregator for each Rick Steves Italian hotel we stayed in who handled payment (Rome, Venice).

More than rare. I live in the UK and I haven't been anywhere that hasn't taken card in the last 3 years or so. Although the UK is the second or third most cashless country in the world according to MasterCard. France is very similar from experience, even very small (2 or 3 tables) restaurants in the middle of nowhere still usually take card. I agree about the odd convenience store that won't take card for under £5 transactions but they normally cave in if they think your going to walk out :P The self service machine in my local Sainsburys (Supermarket for those of you who don't know) don't actually take cash anymore, so even if your just buying something thats 30 or 40p you still have to pay by card (Usually contactless).

Haha, totally a smaller Rick Steve's type place.

I must confess that even myself, who fancies himself as the credit card king (I guess there are others here too who use cards for every last thing whether at home or on holiday) and the only time in the last 6 months or so I've spent cash for anything (I live in the NYC area of the USA) is for 2 haircuts and this includes a trip to Europe last June including a cruise, a trip to the left coast of the USA in December but I have my own self imposed limit i.e. I will not use a credit card for amounts less than $1 US, £1 or €1. The thought of going into Sainsbury, buying a 49p bottle of water and using a credit card, I must admit, does intrigue me! Now I know because in the past, I would have to buy 2 bottles of water and add on an aero bar to meet my self imposed minimum!

Haha I think thats what they thought that people would do as they'd feel silly buying something on card for 40p but people don't really seem to care. Especially with contactless, its still much quicker than paying cash and getting tons of coins from the machine.

I've ended up with a $0.44 remainder at the register at Staples (used coupons and $40 printer ink recycling certs) that I paid for with my JCB card that counted toward the $50 JCB bonus! :D

I'm still waiting for contactless to take off here in the US. Unfortunately, the overblown media hype of "hackers stealing your info from a mile away" stories scared a lot of the people away from them, and of course there's also "the NSA is spying on me with chips on credit cards, run away, run awaaay (ala Monty Python)" people too. Thanks to these, not many cards are available with contactless capability.

Things will speed up once EMV has been rolled out in the US. EMV can be painfully slow sometimes (Especially if the merchant doesn't have a LAN connection) and as EMV contactless is usually offline, its instant.

I think we stand a better chance of mobile payment taking off. Think of the Starbucks or mobile boarding pass model where you can have them scan the barcode off of your phone.

I don't think contactless payment suffers from a perception problem, but so few places consistently accept it and so few cards support it that it never took off. The problem I see with too much reliance on one's phone is what happens when the battery dies or the phone crashes at an inopportune time? There's no fallback technology. I've already had a few fumbles myself with mobile boarding passes where the AA app hiccuped right before the gate agent scanned it.

Well, most smartphones these days come with pre-built NFC technology built in, so there actually won't be any need to read off the QR barcode off the phone screen. Half the time, the laser isn't able to read it anyways depending on the reflection on the screen itself and for the most part, that's what they do over in Europe and Asia where they're years ahead of us in uses of NFC smartphone technology.

I can board a plane or ride the Shinkansen in Japan using an NFC smartphone without even turning it on or showing the screen!

Pretty much all new EMV terminals also accept contactless as well. I don't think the terminal manufactures make many non-contactless emv terminals anymore. Even the terminals in Walmart are contactless enabled (The reader is in the screen) they just don't use it because Visa has ridiculous fees in the US on contactless transactions and treats it as a Card-not-present transaction. This is likely to change with EMV.

Ditto. On the http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...action-us.html thread, the photo shows the EMV card reader equipped with contactless reader (the contactless logo and the 4 lights above) and this EMV terminal seems to be one of the older models out there.

Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) - Master Thread
 

I filed a dispute with Chase on a few of my DCC charges yesterday. All credited within 24 hours. Though the largest single amount was only $2.00. Too bad some of the other issuers make you call in.

Paywave/contactless is VEPS, and you cannot DCC on it

p.468 of VIOR http://usa.visa.com/download/merchan...n.pdf#page=504

With the exception of one time where the dcc was run through without asking I've had similar expereinces. And since I have a number of no forex ccs I just had her cancel the charge and start again.

My wife, on a no forex cc, accepted the USD charge in SIN airport while purchasing duty free. She realized it after the fact.....