You would need to use the rates on Visa's website. Was the transaction date March 6th? If so, the math works out:

1 Turkish Lira = 0.390586 United States Dollar

100 TRY = 39.06 USD

You did the right thing here. You always want to continue without conversion. I don't know how to explain the fee if it's encapsulated in the total price, but it didn't seem to be charged in this case. I have a Fidelity card that also reimburses fees, and those have always been separated from the transaction amount.

Transactions in Indonesia by law must be in IDR, so you don't have to worry about DCC in Indonesia. In that part of the world, Malaysia has some problems with compliant DCC implementations. Singapore and Thailand are generally very compliant.

DCC at ATMs has been talked about on this thread in the past but usually it's not a problem since the user is in control of the transaction. You will never have a cashier pressing buttons/opting in for you without your consent. Always proceed without conversion - some setups might have you confirm twice with confusing language, "Are you absolutely sure?!!! If you do this we cannot guarantee the exchange rate! Press OK to accept rate or NO to cancel." You then press OK thinking it is just a confirmation screen when in reality you're opting back in to the conversion. It's sneaky and dishonest, but it happens. In the worst case, keep declining everything. If it ends up cancelling the transaction, start over and you haven't lost anything.

Travelex ATMs are usually guilty of trying to DCC, but there are other examples as well. Usually those away from airports or other areas with lots of foreigners are safe.

If you could provide the transaction and posting dates of your two ATM withdrawals, we could see what rate was applied and compared to Visa's exchange rate calculator.

I have noticed more ATMs in the UK (the standalone type found in shops and bars) are starting to offer DCC. The ATM at my work (a scientific research facility in the middle of nowhere near Cambridge) offers a particularly poor rate. There is someone who withdraws cash on an almost daily basis (leaving his/her receipt on the machine each time) who opts for DCC on their Euro Maestro card.

I'll grab a receipt next time I see one to post an example of the very poor rate offered.

I have not been to the UK in over 3 years, so it's unsettling that the problem has worsened. I only had on withdrawal during my November 2011 trip (at a Travelex ATM), but I don't remember DCC being much of a problem to avoid at ATMs at the time. I just referenced the transaction and historical exchange rates - Visa doesn't publish rates on the website past one year - and it appears that I avoided DCC at the time. The transaction from 11/24 posted on 11/28 at $311.95. The closest GBP value was £200. Using historical exchange rates from XE, things seemed to be within 0.5% of the exchange rate.

I imagine the acceptance of DCC at ATMs, like retail transactions, is purely out of ignorance rather than wanting a fixed exchange rate.

I can't see the standalone ATMs being a massive problem for tourists, most of the ones used will probably be bank owned ones that don't generally have DCC. Confusingly though, some Sainsburys and some Lloyds ATMs give an estimated rate in the cards currency but it isn't DCC, they still charge in GBP. It'll just show for example, £10 and then 15 USD Est.

I'd hope foreigners aren't being ripped off with ATM dcc too much in the UK anyway, not that they need to withdraw much cash, there aren't many places you can't use a card. (Living here, I haven't used cash in the UK for probably over a year).

Here in the States, both barbers I like are cash only. Otherwise, I use very little cash.

It's interesting about the estimated conversion rate which isn't DCC. I'm extremely cautious whenever I see anything related to USD overseas. If they're giving away the estimate for free, why would people accept DCC? I guess it is only an estimate, not a locked exchange rate. ;)

You must live in a different UK from the one I so dearly love and plan to move to... Plenty of late-night kebabishes and and Indian places and little pubs where cash is still king.

Do bear in mind that one of the lies clerks are instructed to tell people who notice that the dcc scam is being perpetrated on them is to tell them the amount listed in your currency is just an estimate for your convenience and that you are really being billed in whatever the local currency is. Of course when I come back and say then why am I being asked to sign a statement that I agree to the conversion rate and the decision is final, they quickly shut up.

and many of the ones that do accept card there charge £.5/£1 for doing so (easily 10-20% of an order too), so the preferred payment method there is also cash.

And many places have minimum spends too. My local Indian takeaway is £10 minimum, plus a £1 fee. No good if I'm eating on my own. Local butcher has the same minimum spend, but with a 50p fee.

Then you get pubs who make up odd rules. One in Islington (near King's Cross station) would only take cards for purchases under £5 if they were contactless :confused:

Is that true for UK debit cards as well? I know in the US they're not supposed to have minimums for debit but some places do it anyway.

That's what I meant by cash is still king - an exorbitant credit card fee is the same as not accepting cards, as far as I'm concerned. Worse, actually.

It's sad that merchants see credit card fees as a way of raising profit. One place near my charges a US $1 fee on all card transactions. Their typical transaction is a couple of dollars. The fee is massively out of proportion to their cost of acceptance in all these cases. A 20p/25 cent fee? I'd almost feel for the merchant and say "well, they are covering a cost they perceive because they're too short-sighted to see the benefit" but 50 cents... 50p... $1... £1... $2 (yes I've seen it)... outrageous. I'll buy from cash-only businesses, but I try to avoid businesses profiting off of card fees.

The contactless only for under £5? That I'm okay with. They're saving money (contactless incentives... if they existed in the US it might be a different landscape...), and in general, as most British cards have contactless, they're only asking you to please tap instead of insert to save them money.

I have seen this actually be true once. My final receipt, after choosing to pay in Euro on the PIN pad, at the Flying Pig Uptown Amsterdam last summer, had the DCC verbiage on it complete with the final decision statement. They assured me it was only for reference, and as I KNOW what I picked on the PIN pad I decided to leave it be. Sure enough, the transaction was charged correctly in Euro.

Yes. Generally all shops that charge will have a blanket policy regardless of the type of card. Some stores (e.g. Aldi and Lidl) previously only accepted debit cards, although they now take credit cards too.

Things are different on the internet or paying government departments (e.g. DVLA for paying vehicle excise duty) where there tend to be no surcharge for debit cards but 2% usually on credit cards.

Schwab never shows ATM fees separately.

It's always combined into one transaction.

However Schwab is always able to detect how much fee there is in one combined transaction (not exact on the cent, but more or less). So no worries.

I've seen the DCC verbiage before too after choosing in Taiwan:

http://i.imgur.com/ppGxW9om.jpg

The transactions always post correctly in Taiwan Dollars, but one should look out for the following:

1. Making the currency selection yourself
2. If the receipt is thermal, making sure it's denominated in local currency
3. If the receipt is carbon copy with check boxes, asking for courtesy copy/reprint to show currency choice was respected

In the case of most receipts in Taiwan the receipt is thermal and will either say SALE without the DCC verbiage or SALE OPT_O with the DCC verbiage. Both should list the local currency amount. If the receipt only lists your card's currency amount or mentions FX rates, I'd approach the situation cautiously.

THAT is what's unique about this one, it was a thermal receipt, AFTER currency selection with the DCC amount as the total. Sure enough, it truly was informational only...

Even though the customer makes the currency selection, I still wouldn't have trusted the receipt the transaction only showed my card's currency with the DCC verbiage. There would be little recourse in the case where DCC was actually imposed.

To clarify, the slip I signed was in EUR and only EUR. The slip that printed as MY copy was in USD.

That is not true in my experiences in the past. I did see separate ATM fee listed a couple years ago. I did not see separate ATM fee listed last year for withdrawal made in ICN, however as you said, Schwab was able to ferret it out and reimburse it at end of month.

However on this particular Turkey withdrawal, the converted USD does not seem to include the $4 ATM fee because the exchange rate used is as close to the historical rate as within 0.02% at USD 1 = 2.6 TY. $4 on a 100 TY withdrawal would amount to 10% increase in exchange rate calculation, but it is not the rate used. Hence I believe the $4 is not included in the $ amount shown withdrew.

Here are what shown on Schwab site, each was for 100 TY.

03/11/2015 ATM BODRUM CARSI SUBE 2 MUGLA $38.49

03/06/2015 ATM TURKIYE IS BANK ISBANK/ ADANA $39.06

On XC site the historical rate for 3/06 was much lower than the Visa rate which was exactly 3% higher than XC shown.

I definitely think the 3/11 withdrawal does not include the $4 ATM fee.

One withdrawal of 1000 South Africa Rand in Feb.

02/19/2015 ATM ABSA O.R TAMBO *O.R TAM KEMPTON PARK $86.37

These three amounts all match Visa's rate exactly for the dates listed. I can't explain why the XC rate was 3% lower than Visa's. Usually the two rates are within 0.5% of each other.

Last December when I checked out of the Marriott hotel in Jaipur India, I got these boxes. I checked the one with INR. But on my statement I saw they deceptively did a DCC and gave me a poor conversion rate.

That's very common, unfortunately.

I have been using Schwab for only a year so I admit I can't say for years back. But I believe included or not is determined by the specific ATMs. It's them who decide whether the fees are included in the transaction or run as separate ones.

All my withdraws last year in Australia, New Zealand, Korea, USA, Vietnam, and China include the fees in the transactions themselves.

If you don't see the ATM fee listed separately, it's quite weird since I don't think the ATM would give up the fee itself... Sometimes postings on Debit Cards can be delayed for days (my Australia Tax Refund took a week to post).

I agree whether the fee is separately billed depends on ATM as I have seen the separately billed ATM fees before - both on Schwab's and on Fido's.

Last year on the receipts from ATM at ICN and BKK, the ATM fees were shown in details but of course the withdrawals were net amounts. All fees were reimburded.

On this particular withdrawal in Turkey the ATM receipt only showed the amount withdrew, 100 TY, nothing else. It has been almost 2 weeks from the withdrawal, no additional item shows up at Schwab's site. It does seem weird because the machine clearly display $4 ATM fee and asked if I wanted to accept it to continue.

Program bugs??? Money losing bugs!!!

I think maybe Schwab uses the posted USD amount to determine the local amount. Because ATMs can only disperse amounts in at least tens, Schwab can then use this to determine the original local amount and figure out the USD equivalent of the fee. This is the way I can think of.

If this is true, I'm interested to see what would happen if foreign ATM transactions are DCCed. With a ATM transaction of XX.XX USD, will Schwab just reimburse X.XX or (X.XX - 5) (if X.XX is greater than 5) back to you???

Significant Capital One FTF advantage
 

Hello,

So over the years, I have been monitoring currency conversion. I think we all look for no explicit FTF (issuer added) as a good sign, but I still felt that there were differences I couldn't explain. Even with the Euro at a significant discount to previous years, Capital One appears to continue to even waive the Visa or MC part of the rate (not sure if this is official).

Here is one example of the tale of two charges both from the same merchant made on the same day (and posted, two days later at the same day).

258 Euro charge, charged to Chase Marriott Signature Visa (no FTF except the Visa fee), posted on 3/23 - 280.75 USD (1.0881 USD to EUR - matches Visa website exactly).

198 Euro charge, charged to Capital One QS WE MasterCard (no FTF including MC fee), posted on 3/23 - 211.01 USD (1.0657 USD to EUR - seems like more than a 2.6% savings compared to the listed MC rate). The Visa rate by the way slightly better than the MasterCard website listed rate which indicates to me that Visa did more volume that settlement day than MasterCard and was able to get a better rate.

So, when we are chasing a few percent of cash back or equivalent, why wouldn't we be considering the actual exchange rates more often for our preferred card of choice overseas? That seems to more than offset the slightly lower rebate value of Capital One's consumer cards. I admit that it is hard to manage to that level of detail, but in general, if Capital One is removing the full exchange rate overhead, that seems to be as close to being a major international banker as one can get.

I am lucky to have a few issuers I can test including BofA (historic FIA card with no FTF), Barclay (newer no FTF policy) and the aforementioned cards. However, I don't use them like this very often in international rotation.

Rasheed

Good points. Most of my trips are business trips. While I am not going to get my employer ripped off through DCC, I am also looking at maximizing my cash back. So while Amex Costco charges me 3% FTF, it gives me 3% only on US restaurants and travel. So I plan to use my Sams Master card which is 3% travel worldwide even though they do charge 3% FTF. My Capital one QS is fee free and no FTF. But that is a subprime card company where they are stingy with credit limits. Even though my balance is close to 6 figures in the checking/savings, my credit limit is only $12.5k which renders the card useless to my household spending limits. I thus prefer my $45k UNFCU Visa or $35k Sams Master Card or even $25 Amex Costco. If my QS had at least $25k limit, I would have happily used it. So my QS is generally locked up and used occasionally for small personal expenses overseas. A good thing about the card for US usage is that like UNFCU card it is also on Apple pay.

Is your limits on QS liberal enough for your usage?

Does the published Visa rate encapsulate the 1% fee? I thought they had to separate it and that the Marriott card was truly 0%, but I could be mistaken. Is it also always the case that CapitalOne uses an effective rate lower than MC's published rate? If you don't accept DCC, I don't know how the rate would be different than the published rate, but you do bring up a good point about being able to compare the rates between Visa and MasterCard when deciding which card to use.

Mine was worse at $2000. This was also in the days before FlyerTalk (and associated churning and manufactured spending) for me when my credit was impeccable. However, in the 3 years I had that card they never granted me a credit limit increase. Once Chase and AmEx Platinum started to offer 0% FTF as a feature, I promptly dropped the card. I'm a little worried about the switchover from Costco AmEx to Capital One. We'll see if things transfer in kind.

I'm pretty sure Chase Marriott is truly 0%.

Visa website rates don't include the 1%, and Chase rates always match the Visa rate. Chase don't charge its 2% and eats the Visa's 1%. If Chase charges FTF, it's gonna be a single charge which includes both (as the ones on my old and deceased Chase Freedom card).

Everybody please correct me if I'm wrong.

My guess is that Capital One's posting date rates were different from the ones that OP thought were the actual posting rates. Maybe if we find another time when currency fluctuation isn't huge, we can see Capital One rates matching MC rates?

My experience with Chase MC IHG card is that it always uses the MC rates. It's a true 0% as well. If OP's Capital One card is the true 0% and mines aren't, we would see 1% in saving instead of 2.6%, right?

AirAsia DCC
 

I'm pretty sure I got hit with DCC last night booking tickets online with AirAsia (on a Citibank, no FTF MasterCard).

I tried to pay in Indonesian Rupiah at the payment screen; the total amount was 4,780,000 IDR, equivalent to US$368.12. First attempt denied. On the phone with Citibank I was told that their fraud department was NOT blocking the charge; they weren't showing an authorization request coming in on their side at all. While still on the phone, I tried again, and once again was denied.

On the payment page I changed the currency to US dollars and was quoted $386.61, an higher price of $18.49, and almost exactly 5% higher.

The charge in US dollars was approved on the same card.

At no point did any DCC verbiage stating that I had a right to choose currencies, and paying in my home currency would result in a 5% convenience charge show up. Just "this is the price in dollars."

My receipt, however, shows that I paid 4,780,000 IDR under the "total paid" section. (And this is AFTER paying a 200,000 IDR / US$15.40 processing fee for using a credit card!)
http://i1152.photobucket.com/albums/...afe6af64bd.jpg

My question is, does this qualify as DCC or just a merchant selling one item at different prices across different currencies?

vegascraig:

1. One one hand Indonesian merchants cannot charge anything but IDR by virtue of Indonesian law http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...on-61.html#904

2. OTOH Thai Airasia charges out of Malaysian headquarters http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...w.php?id=11968 (the Airasia charge was for Thai Airasia), so maybe Airasia Indonesia charges out of Malaysia as well?

I would say this is currency conversion, not dynamic.

Air New Zealand website can do the same thing. But it didn't stop me from actually paying in NZD. And of course paying in USD resulted more if the price was originally quoted in NZD.

Basically your product is quoted in one base currency, and every other currency will include a conversion loss sort of thing.

In this case AirAsia's system was having a problem and it self-denied IDR transactions. I had the same problem with Air China that the CNY transactions were denied on Chase cards. The difference is that Chase saw authorizations, but it wasn't Chase who denied them. Air China's system just though there was something wrong and stopped the transactions after successful authorizations.

Is an exchange rate listed on your credit card's statement or does it look like a 'native' USD purchase?

The charge listed on my online banking appears to be a native USD purchase (just as the other two times I got forced into DCC at B&M merchants).

http://i1152.photobucket.com/albums/...dGraphic-2.png

This is the exact amount offered by AirAsia at purchase, and even shown on another copy of an invoice I was emailed. This was not the exchange rate used by Citibank or MasterCard, it was AirAsia's arbitrary amount in USD (5% higher than the true exchange rate). I just tried to recreate this purchase on their website, and purchases in IDR and MYR were the same price, but USD, AUD and EUR purchases all had a 5% markup.

http://i1152.photobucket.com/albums/...230c4cd2f1.jpg

Also, on my booking screen, I can see the three transactions (card number redacted but all on the same card), the two declined in IDR and the one approved in USD:
http://i1152.photobucket.com/albums/...dce422473b.png

Thank you all for your opinions and advice. I only wish the IDR transactions would have gone through. I guess I won't complain too much about the extra $18 though; it's still nice to be able to get lie-flat business class seats on a 6 hour flight for less than US$200 each:cool:

Pending is always in native currency - this is true for almost all banks' cards I have - AMEX, Citi, Chase, Barclays and BofA. However once transactions are POSTED, you can then click on the line and open up the description where you will see the foreign currency. Some banks wouldn't show it until statement. I dont remember the nuisance of each bank.

You would need to wait till posted transaction or statement close, in order to see the foreign currency billed. Only when no foreign currency showing after the transaction POSTED, that you could claim it is a DCC.

As soon as it posts I'll post it here. You're right, I've never seen a transaction still pending with an exchange rate posted. However, I have a feeling it will be this exact amount as a native USD transaction though, considering the amount listed on my receipt in USD and the amount of the pending charge in USD is exactly the same, and nowhere the real exchange rate.

If it turns out to be DCC you could still try to file a Reason Code 4846 chargeback with Citibank. You could claim that you were not given the option of paying in local currency (notice that the IDR charges were 'declined'), that they did not disclose the exchange rate, and that they did not advertise they were applying their own non-MasterCard exchange rate.

A lot of airlines have multi-currency charging systems. I doubt the bank would give anything back if it were the cardholder who selected the currency.

It's no different than a paper receipt where the merchant selects for you (against your wishes). The only disadvantage here is that you can't completely deface the receipt stating that a local option wasn't offered.