DCC in the Maldives
 

We went to a total of three resorts.

The first two hotels have crappy billing systems. Angsana Ihuru presented a very confusing bill and only after leaving did I realise they overcharged me for board. Banyan Tree Vabbinfuru charged me for individual meals as well as board at the same time and I had to spend 20 minutes with them arguing they had to be taken out.

But no DCC problems - their card terminals are fine. They used a local bank. The amounts were posted correctly in USD (their native currency) on my Citi HK online banking.

As I checked into the third resort, the Taj Exotica, I noticed they had a Global Payments card terminal. I thought I will be shafted at checkout.

The stay was good enough for me to forget the thought. We weren't given late checkout on last day but my flight was at 22:35, but we played so much we barely had 15 minutes to checkout before the 20:00 boat transfer to airport.

The bill was correct for once. I handed my card, saying very distinctively and slowly "charge U-S dollars please"

The cashier handed me a slip to sign. I frowned.

http://www.hongkongcard.com/webedito...2219_45534.jpg

"You selected USD right?"
"Yes sir"
I ticked the box, signed and photoed the hell out of it and signed. I was further worried when the cashier gave me a cardholder receipt with two unticked boxes.

"Are you sure this is USD?"
"Yes sir, if you want HKD, I have to press a button after."

She even offered me her name for the record and I sat down. I was not comfortable at all (given Citibank has a HK$2/mile promo for non-HKD spending but denies all points and passes on 0.8% FTF for DCC, not to mention the 2.4% scalp Global Payments is trying to rob). I couldn't help calling HK and asking how much credit was held. To my horror it was HK$12,409.42 (a USD charge should be held at the HKD-USD currency peg rate of 7.76 x USD amount or approx $11,886.23, with the amount being grossed up by 1.95% FCF when posted)

I stormed back to the desk and asked to void. She said she will fix it in the "back office" a bit later. When I said there is no such thing she went to the back office and grabbed her supervisor. Then she sent someone to stop the boat that's meant to take us away.

The supervisor voided the slip, which showed Global Payments indeed had went ahead and charged me in HKD.

He proceeded to charge me a second time. I adopted the Global Payment stomach over counter posture again. I saw the following:

1. Supervisor keys in amount
2. Cardholder receipt printed
3. Card terminal prompts "Print next receipt?" --> Supervisor presses no (presumably his junior pressed yes here)
4. USD and HKD choices offered. He selects USD.
5. USD selected and cardholder receipt printed (confusingly, identical to DCCed transaction above)

He also prints off the "Merchant Courtesy Copy", which shows USD only.

http://www.hongkongcard.com/webedito...2305_38526.jpg

I decided to sign (I had a USD card but that practically earned no miles), photo (had to use my missus's iPhone as my own decided to hang at this point) and we run off to the boat. I had kept two other couples waiting.


I was feeling pretty good until my flight landed in HK - I flipped on my phone and got connected to Citi before my flight reached its parking bay. Dammit, HK$12,409.42 is being held again.

Maybe the terminal holds credit at DCC rate and posts according to cardholder selection (not yet), but I've had Citi send me a dispute form (getting Citi's fax server to fax you a form takes half a day...) cos I don't have a good feeling about this.

Even if the terminal eventually posts correctly, Global Payments deserves a large sharp piece of coral shoved up its anus for this. By default, the terminal will DCC unless you answer the illogical answer ("No") to a deceptively worded question ("Print next receipt?").

I think the staff's reaction was reasonable but Taj Exotica deserves to be named and shamed for signing up for DCC (and a non-compliant one at that).

My experience of DCC is that they hold the DCC amount, and then show the correct amount.

There are lots of DCC POS machines that use very deceptively weird ways to trick people.

BTW, I got my American Express Platinum. Now if I go to some war zones, I will just use this to shut those greedy transaction handlers (like this Global Payment sxxt) up.

I'll have to watch out for this. The fact the manager was able to produce a merchant copy of the receipt with a USD amount would put me at ease somewhat, but it's unfortunate we have to be hypervigilant and willing to fight at every step of the way. Using AmEx isn't always an option, and I imagine it's only a matter of time before AmEx jumps on the DCC scam too.

Discover Card actually warns travelers about the DCC scam

https://www.discover.com/credit-card...d-abroad.shtml

Look at that, a credit card company actually warning customers about DCC, unlike VISA and MC. Maybe for int'l travel, we can start using Discover cards instead through their Diners Club-JCB-Union Pay agreements.

Why would they? Visa and Mastercard don't allow DCC because they WANT to, they don't benefit at all from it. They allow it because they don't want to get sued under consumer protection laws protecting "competition."

I say we go with the plan of writing letters to banks to create an "always decline DCC" option on our bank servers side.

1. Go online to credit card account
2. Tick option to always decline DCC
3. Will always decline DCC abroad no matter what happens abroad

Who says the terminal should let make decisions for us without our input? If the banks abroad wants to play the "always set to DCC mode with no way around it" game with their terminals, we should have an equal playing field to have the consumer option to "always set to no DCC with no way around it" on our own accounts.

And get more merchants accepting Visas even if they scam cardholders...

I'm not totally convinced Visa really wants that, I think they turn a blind eye to it because so few cardholders complain or even care. I think if they felt it was creating a bad cardholder experience, they would quickly start enforcing the rules, thus why complaining to Visa is so important.

With regards to DCC however, it's a VISA international one that affects all VISA cardholders whether they live in Europe, Canada, US, Japan or wherever.

So one way of looking at this is maybe Americans and Japanese hate it, but Canadians and Europeans love it (as an example). If that's the case, what would VISA do?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that whether people like DCC or not, has to be reflective of a very large pool size as there are VISA cardholders all over the world.

Not at all, they allow DCC to help their merchants make more money. This helps them attract merchants and justifies charging them higher swipe fees because they can recover some of it through DCC.

I don't think there is any legitimate basis for a competition lawsuit. Amex doesn't allow DCC and they haven't been sued yet.

Worldwide, Amex doesn't face the same regulation because they aren't considered to have undue influence on the market. If a merchant doesn't take Amex, it's not going to cost them much, if any, business. If a merchant doesn't take Visa or Mastercard, that will hurt their business. Thus, they face stricter regulation.

You may claim there is no grounds for a lawsuit, but Australia's consumer protection (or in this case, merchant protection) group has ALREADY sued Visa over not allowing Dynamic Currency Conversion - https://www.accc.gov.au/media-releas...ainst-visa-inc

THIS is why Visa and Mastercard allow the practice, they're heavily regulated in most of the world. Discover/Diner's and Amex are not since they're not seen to be able to control the market in the same way. This is also why Visa/MC interchange is heavily regulated and Amex isn't.

If Visa hadn't invented DCC in the first place, there would be no basis for any lawsuits.

What do you think the original rationale for DCC was? Customer convenience? Or, to make Visa/MC more attractive to merchants?

I don't know if this is the whole story but dcc began in Ireland by Irish merchants who basically opened up credit card accounts in different countries. So a merchant would have a credit card account with a bank that processed charges in US dollars, another that processed charges in sterling and a third that processed charges in Irish punts. The conversions were done manually and the charge slips processed through the appropriate bank (remember electronic processing of credit transactions was a relatively late comer to the scene).

As technology evolved and electronic processing of credit card operatons took hold in the 90's, acquirers began processing things electronically and essentially worked out methods of having the charges submitted by the merchants electronically bypass the international visa and/or mc networks and enter the system at a point where the currency the charge was written in was the local currency. All this could be accomplished electronically. It was there that dcc began taking off, spreading outside Ireland and in essence dcc as we know it today was born. Perhaps one of the reasons it has never spread to Amex is acquirers could not work out an entry point for converted charges with Amex which is sort of a closed network. Note I said perhaps.

Of course indeed in Australia a law suit was filed against mc/visa for trying to stop merchants and acquirers from using dcc. But no such lawsuit has been filed agaiint Amex so we have what we have today where acquirers and merchants by the use of dcc are able to get a piece of the currency action depriving mc and visa and the banks in other country the ability to play the great currency game. So what did mc/visa and the banks do? Why they put fees on all foreign transactions as opposed to foreign currency exchange transactions. So the dcc acquirers blame visa/mc telling customers they were prepared to offer good rates oand provide the convenience of knowing just how much an item cost in a currency the consumer could understand and for business people making their job of submitting expense reports easier but it was the big bad networks and banks that were ripping off the customers not them who were trying to provide a valuable service to both merchans and consumers. Of course we know who was lying, don't we?

It'll be absolutely disgusting if (when?) DCC spreads to Australia. At least I can be the ugly American there and know that there is not a language barrier. :td::td::td:

It already has (though I have been able to get out of it.)
source: recent visits to Sydney