Or a hammer. :p

Are there any other places where there are hard-coded non-compliant terminals even with a willing cashier? I know in Ireland and Poland you can get screwed, but I think this is more of an artifact of everybody knowing what's up but deciding not to be helpful.

My understanding of DCC in China is that nearly all terminals are beatable. The bad part is they all have their uniquely different ways to turn DCC off, and all of the ways are totally NOT straightforward. In no way a human being can intuitively figure out how to do that unless someone teaches the how-to.

Some terminals require the "cancel-button" trick, and some terminals have a menu of settings which is guarded by passwords only known to the banks. So unless you are sure how to do that on a particular terminal, there is no way you can do that just by telling the cashier you want to be charged CNY...

However, ICBC terminals in Beijing really don't have DCC at all. So if you see ICBC terminals (which produce slips with ICBC “中国工商银行" on the top), just swipe your Visa/MC as many times as you want.

About the situation in Ireland, is it like China that you have to know the trick to turn DCC off, or is it straightforward like Singapore and HK but the cashiers guard the keypad so they force DCC on you by not letting you key-in your choice?

I can't comment on Ireland from firsthand experience, but many have complained about even places like Burger King doing DCC. I doubt Burger King would even use signature verification on a small purchase. (I found that McDonald's in Australia does though. With their changeover to PIN, it always creates a mad scramble to find a pen for me to sign the receipt.)

If we end up going to Xiamen, I'll keep a lookout for the various credit card terminals and follow some of the best practices here. I can let my spouse do most of the talking. 我說中文不好。:D

I will say this about Ireland. The situation has improved somewhat over a couple of decades ago when Ireland essentially introduced this cancer to the travelling world. In most cases, now, merchants ask if you wish to pay in dollars (assuming you have a USA denominated card) or euro. Sometimes, people ask which is better and I've heard clerk respond with things like well you can lock in the rate. But for the most part, they do ask today (and of course there is not a big language problem in Ireland with residents from the USA or actually there might be).

I brought up the Burger King thing from a few years ago. Now I don't know if this was a corporte policy. The so called manager was a year or two older than the clerk. Neither wa Irish. One seemed to be from Rumania and her English was not all that great (remember eu regulations mandate that any citizen of the eu can work in any other eu country, something you see more and more in Ireland and England causing language problems even for people such as myself totally fluent in English; they're not). In any event, she said when I said that pulling the dcc scam was contrary to mc regulations, she answered me maybe in the USA but not in Ireland. Of course she was some low level stooge who probably didn't have a clue as to what she was talking about.

But like I said, that was really an exception. Ireland had received a lot of bad publicity about this and I sense the Irish Tourst Board has had something to say about this.

Never been to Xiamen myself. My wife says it is a good city.

When making small purchases, I suggest just use Amex or cash to avoid the hassle. The loss in points and miles are really small.

When making large purchases, like in a hotel or something, just request repeatedly about turning-off DCC, and prepare to do a chargeback if it doesn't work out~ Only these large transactions are worth the extra work.

Are there any articles that you could cite? I'm just wondering where the bad publicity has been other than a few disgruntled people on traveler forums.

It's not about the miles or points. It's about contesting the scam that is DCC. The fights aren't about the miles, points, or small absolute value of the DCC scalp. It's about creating a hassle for banks and/or the merchants each and every time they don't follow Visa/MC policy.

So much as I suspected, the dcc scam pulled on me in Germany was quickly resolved by Bank of America. The charge was for €7.47 which according to Oanda.com when converted to USD on the next business day should have been $10.19. Instead the piece of slime merchant billed me in USD for $10.76 a difference of 56¢. I know many here will say what's the big deal but it's the principle of the matter. I was not given a choice in the conversion as the merchant never gave me a charge slip to sign and the statement on the charge slip you are supposed to sign starts out by saying I accept that I have been offered a choice of currencies for payment...I surely wasn't.

In any event, I wanted it charged back to the merchant but much as I suspected would happen if though the disputes person I spoke to had no idea of what I was talking about, they gave me a 57¢ credit.

No wonder this scam is allowed to continue. Nobody wants to punish the merchants who pull this garbage.

This is why I suggest we stick to the technical terms instead of a regular dispute. Say you want a Reason Code 76 chargeback for Visa or Reason Code 1846 chargeback for MasterCard. You can calculate the exact amount of the markup from Visa or MasterCard directly based on the date the transaction posted and any FTF fee your card levies. (I assume everybody on here is using 0% FTF cards.)

I don't dispute what you said but the people I spoke to at disputes today (maybe they only have novices in on Sundays) really had no idea of what I was talking about. Did I make the charge? Absotively. Does the merchant deserve €7.47? Yes even though I didn't sign anything.

I do agree with those here who say it's visa/mc's fault for allowing this scam in the first place. How to make visa/mc get off their collective rear ends and end this garbage once and for all.

Your questions didn't continue...

Did you make the charge? Yes.

Does the merchant deserve €7.47? Yes.

Did the merchant charge you €7.47? No. You were overcharged, and the transaction occurred in a currency you didn't agree to use.

You need to start saying exactly what happened. The merchant overcharged you. Even if the customer service rep doesn't understand chargeback codes or DCC, the person will understand, "The merchant overcharged me." Now, the credit card company may choose to absorb the loss, which is fine with me. I'm hoping with enough calls they'd finally look into it. This is why I relish being able to dispute a large transaction where I was forced into DCC because the bank will be forced into a chargeback situation.

But really what jeffjaguar did is the next best thing to chargeback - educate issuers to learn about DCC and fight it at the Visa/MC international level.

It's difficult to do when you're dealing with some low-level customer service rep, possibly in an overseas call center, and trying to educate that person on DCC. The management probably provides them with a flowchart about disputes. This is why I was saying to state that he was overcharged, which is true.

So, I googled "Reason Code 76" and up popped a link to an entertaining publication titled: Chargeback Management Guidelines for VISA Merchants (2014). RC 76 is covered on pages 67-68, which includes the following advice to the merchant owner/manager: "If your outlet is actively involved in the offering of DCC to cardholders, ensure all sales staff know how to correctly offer this service...It is also essential that employees know how they can reverse a transaction."

JJ - at the conversion rate you cited, I make that extra $0.57 a DCC penalty of 5.59% on the correct amount - pretty sizable.

Well I suppose such "I (BoA) can't be bothered to deal with it properly" ex-gratia payments go into some exception report. Once the payments get frequent enough and large enough I am hoping someone at BoA will take a fire axe to swing at Visa.