I did that already - bought a box of brownies one box at a time from the same cashier in Seoul:


http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...hp?id=3939&p=7 #59

I bought three boxes of brownies with three cards.

Transaction date: 28 Oct
Merchant: Lotte Supermarket, Seoul
Amount: KRW2,500

Bankcomm Diamond Unionpay
Post date: 29 Oct
HKAB rate: 0.007330
Bankcomm rate: 0.007128
Discount: 2.76%

SCB AE
Post date: 30 Oct
SCB rate: 0.007208
HKAB rate: 0.007320
Discount: 1.53%

Shacom PLK MC
Post date: 30 Oct
HKAB rate: 0.007320
Shacom rate: 0.007192
Discount: 1.75%


I was criticized for not including Visa. So, next trip, one weekend in Bangkok (not same cashier tho):

http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...hp?id=3939&p=7 #61

Amex Gold Charge
Post date: 19 Nov
HKAB sell rate: 0.2556
Amex rate: 0.2579
Premium: 0.90%

Shacom PLK MC
Post date: 19 Nov
HKAB sell rate: 0.2556
Shacom rate: 0.2591
Premium: 1.36%

Bankcomm Plat Visa
Post date: 19 Nov
HKAB sell rate: 0.2556
Bankcomm rate: 0.2575
Premium: 0.74%

Bankcomm Diamond Unionpay
Post date: 19 Nov
HKAB sell rate: 0.2556
Bankcomm rate: 0.2542
Discount: 0.55%

I used to use Amex a lot due to earning rates for miles. In my experience:

- if the transaction is dirty float or exchange rate-controlled, Amex does better. Examples: RMB, TWD, KRW and THB

- if the transaction currency is generally free float Amex does badly. Examples: AUD, GBP and EUR

One time I saw a GBP/HKD exchange rate complaint on a AE network card being posted on hongkongcard.com. I found Amex had actually used a intra-day peak rate from four days before the posting date for converting the transaction http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...hp?id=3939&p=3 #27. So I figured Amex makes a killing when the currency is highly fluctuating and not so much when the currency is flat.

I'll have to try this when I'm in Taiwan in September to see the differences in exchange rates (plus provide some DCC examples too). I primarily use Chase Visa products, but you're saying generally speaking AmEx will have a more favorable exchange rate. And I imagine it doesn't matter for my USD denominated cards for places like HK where the exchange rate is pegged to USD?

You are saying UnionPay are even better than Visa/MC/AMEX rates??? The rates provided by 95516 (for USD to CNY) is always worse than USD to CNY rates from Visa/MC... Usually around 0.2% to 0.35% worse.

This is shown with using Discover on UnionPay network in China. Since the conversion is done by UnionPay when the CNY transaction is posted to 银联国际业务平台 in USD using UnionPay rate, the rate is usually 0.2% to 0.35% worse than Visa/MC/AMEX.

BTW, just did some purchases today using both Visa and AMEX Plat, got almost identical rates.

I have the same feeling too~

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)

Zyxlsy: that's be cause unionpay issuers in HK forgo foreign currency translation fee (it's 1.95% for v/MC and 2% for ae). Add them back and you'll see unionpay wholesale rate is worse off

OK, now I understand~

That's why my CSP does a much better job because the fee is 0%.

Do HK banks issue real "no FTF" cards?

First time encountering DCC in Australia. My wife and I sat down at Coffee and Chocolate at a Queens Plaza in Brisbane. The DVD almost happened too quickly for me to react. Now, the fact I was using my US chip-and-signature card helped somewhat because the cashier immediately handed me the terminal to enter a PIN. The cashier looked confused and I saw USD 23.7x. (I forget the exact amount as I was in shock of it happening.) I felt like in the movies where the character realized he had just stepped on a landmine. The cashier said, "Oh. You can press OK." In order to decline DCC I actually had to press the yellow CLR button. Pressing the green OK/ENTER would have resulted in DCC being accepted. The original amount in AUD was $24.15. With the pending charge on Chase's website being $22.67, the markup would be around 4.5%. This was an ANZ terminal. Nice try, ANZ, but I refuse to fall victim to DCC.

I have the customer copy of the receipt which shows AUD abd is free of DCC verbiage. Combined with the pending charge and comparing to Visa's current exchange rate, I think I have safely avoided DCC. After comparing my receipts here is the breakdown of the 12 purchases I've made (all with a Chase Visa) in Australia:

Commonwealth Bank: 3
Westpac: 3
ANZ: 2 (1 tried DCC)
Nab: 1
Suncorp: 1
Unknown: 2 (CityRail and Coles)

I just got all the results back from four purchases using different networks in a Starbucks.

AMEX Plat: (6/12 13:17 pm China Standard Time, posted 6/13 (EST?))
CNY amount 27; USD amount 4.35; Rate = 6.20689655172

Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa: (6/12 12:01 pm China Standard Time, posted 6/13 (EST?))
CNY amount 18; USD amount 2.89 (2.89 authorized); Rate = 6.22837370242

United Club Card Visa: (6/12 13:28 pm China Standard Time, posted 6/13 (EST?))
CNY amount 26; USD amount 4.18 (4.17 authorized); Rate = 6.22009569378

IHG MC: (6/12 12:12 pm China Standard Time, posted 6/13 (EST?))
CNY amount 18; USD amount 2.90 (2.89 authorized); Rate = 6.20689655172

From Visa Europe:

Visa 6/12 6.228007
Visa 6/13 6.225177
Visa 6/14 6.206708

From MasterCard:

MC 6/12 6.217500
MC 6/13 6.209000
MC 6/14 N/A (I guess this website is for MC US)

I am still confused about how Chase presents the dates. The dates on its website are EST or PST or something?

The problem I see with this experiment is that the amounts are too small to see the difference. But the rates tend to be close.

My wires to Chase, Citi, and JP Morgan (all NY banks) reliably post at 9a EDT/EST, if that's any indication for you (I think I posted about this up thread a few months ago).

Off topic, I haven't checked the USD/CNY fx rates in about a month, and I had no idea that the USD was still so strong.

Yes, I think Chase uses ET. When I was charging in Australia last week the transactions were mostly showing up as pending based on the the time and date back home. For the Visa exchange rate, Chase uses the exchange rate on the date the transaction posts to your account. The pending charge reflects the exchange rate at the time of purchase, but will not necessarily be the amount that posts to your account (unless of course you got hit with DCC).

I saw my second instance of DCC at F1RST Tax & Duty Free at Brisbane Airport. I guess that's to be expected. I threw a bit of a curveball at the system by splitting tender between cash - I wanted to use the rest of my AUD - charging the rest. In fairness to their system, they had a big LCD panel with the currencies and flags. Since I said, "Australian dollars, please!" almost instinctively, I didn't have time to snap a photo or look at what the markup was. This would have been hefty though because they charged a 1.5% credit card surcharge plus whatever the DCC rate would have been. Overall though I am happy to report that DCC was rare from my experience. Only 2 out of 20 purchases had DCC, one was the cafe in Brisbane I mentioned previously - I was surprised with this one - and the other was the duty free store at the airport, which was unsurprising. My purchases spanned hotels, restaurants, cafes, fast food, supermarkets, etc.

One thing that helps matters is that Australia is transitioning to chip-and-PIN in about a month, so all of the cashiers instinctively handed me the credit card terminal. I'm convinced this got me out of the DCC charge at the coffee shop as most cashiers just repeatedly and rapidly press enter until the transaction completes. I was able to stare at the terminal for a good 5 seconds to figure out what to do. The next trip overseas is to Taiwan/HK/Macau/possibly Mainland China, so this was the warm-up. :D

The other wrinkle was that it was a Chase-issued card run on a Chase Paymentech terminal, because this happened more than once on those terminals for me.

majuki: glad Australians implemented DCC this way. In Uk (another chip and pin jurisdiction), the DCC selection is controlled by the cashier, not by the cardholder using pin pad.

But isn't there a way to see the transaction amount either on the cash register's screen or on the PIN pad. If I noticed them trying to pull DCC, I would refuse to enter my PIN. Of course, this only works if cardholder verification is required. We've read the reports of it happening at Burger King in Ireland and the cashiers being "powerless" to stop it.

I think Burger King in Ireland is infamous as the worst forced DCC offender in the world. It's certainly the only place I've ever been force DCC'd