AirAsia DCC(?) Charges Posted
 

Aaaand...it's finally posted.http://i1152.photobucket.com/albums/...0600241bb4.png

Showing a Singapore-based merchant but absolutely no currency conversion information at all. And at the same USD rate as listed in my previous messages.

To reiterate, I *did* agree to pay this amount in USD; only, however, after my card in Indonesia rupiah had been denied twice.

I did NOT, however, book through a different country-specific site or with a different merchant; on the final page I just changed the currency from IDR to USD after the IDR charges were denied.

Citibank claims that they were *not* the ones blocking the charge; they didn't even see the authorization request come in on their side.

And yet AirAsia shows that I was charged in IDR, and my receipt is in IDR, at an amount close to USD 20 higher, when converted back to IDR.

Since they're claiming to have been paid in IDR, does this mean it was a case of DCC and should I fight it?

I think it's akin to global blue forcing us to take refunds in our card currencies at 5% surcharge - either take it or leave it.

The worst Citibank can do is deny your chargeback claim. Tell them the receipt denominated in IDR and claim you weren't informed that the conversion would be happening and at what rate. You can mention you would like to file a reason code 4846 chargeback. You can read about it here. I think the key phrase is:

A valid chargeback in MasterCard's opinion is simply you stating in writing that you were not given the opportunity to choose the desired currency in which the transaction was completed or did not agree to the currency of transaction. It's clear from what happened here that you made a good faith effort to try to get the transaction to process in IDR but the website wasn't allowing you to complete the transaction. This is similar to where a merchant chooses for you and you get handed a receipt in your card's, not local, currency.

So I checked out today from a Hilton hotel in New Delhi. I told the checkout person, I only wanted to pay in India Rupee. I used my Sams chip and pin card. The card never asked for my pin. I signed it.
The point here however is about DCC. He said if I use this terminal when it shows the cash amount, a green will allow the USD transaction. The yellow leads to USD transaction. He also showed me a smaller POS, which he said only spits out USD, no choice. sorry, I did not take down the name of the device.

India seems to be almost as bad as mainland China with respect to DCC.

I've seen the POS integrated with the hotel's systems, and sometimes the currency selection has to be made on that. If the terminal was completely standalone where the cashier entered the amount then I'd be surprised if there wasn't a selection possible unless it's like the locked down Chinese terminals. After you entered the PIN it didn't come up as "USD blahblahblah OK?" There wasn't any indication that the transaction would be in USD?

There is only one reason why I don't mind chip-and-signature, and this is it. In the worst case you can completely deface the receipt to assist with a chargeback.

Interestingly I've just discovered one of my UK cards doesn't support Dynamic currency conversion on chip transactions because they've not put the cards home currency/country on the chip, so a terminal doesn't know where the card was issued. I've seen one or two transactions in Asia, where it says "checking DCC amt and then nothing happens and the transaction continues in the countries currency. (Obviously on swipe transactions it would be done by the BIN, so DCC would still work).

I wonder if this could be a way issuers could prevent DCC from happening overseas. :D

It seems that to do that would be in violation of antitrust regulations. Remember, DCC doesn't exist because Visa and Mastercard want it. DCC exists because "consumer" (i.e. merchant) advocacy groups demand it.

Wow, this is some news (I think so at least) - could it be a way to run around DCC, if some European/North American bank would agree to the fact that DCC is a scam, and put their cards into such mode? I guess if enough people are pissed off by DCC, offering such service could get them a lot of business?

Haha. To be honest, I doubt its intentional, Lloyds don't put the currency code or even the language on their Amex cards as well as their MasterCards. I know this because when I go abroad, the terminal often asks me the language, whereas with other Amex cards the transaction just shows up in English.

I don't know if it would legally questionable for banks for consumers to be able to opt out of DCC though.

I feel like this is getting worse and worse. Usually HK and Taiwan is not too bad about DCC but I've noticed almost every credit card slip I used had DCC. Even if the cashier specifically said they are charging in local currency, I still see the DCC amount on my online activity. I've been putting in several disputes a month for small amounts for DCC, and I'm sure the CC companies are getting annoyed as well as I think they still have to review each case manually.

Has this occurred in Taiwan? Taiwan has at least in my experience for the last 4 years or so been almost completely compliant in respecting cardholder choice. Hong Kong is largely compliant, but there are examples where DCC slips past even with explicitly signing and checking the box on a carbon copy piece of paper. However, yes, I do feel as though I see DCC in more places now, but perhaps I've simply become more aware of the scam. I got hit multiple times in Spain in 2006, which was my first time abroad on my own. I didn't even know it had happened. However, two things were different back then. First, the issuer would charge a foreign exchange fee of 3% (before I had 0% FTF cards) only if the charge was in local currency; DCC presented in USD and prevented the 3% charge. Second, the DCC markup was about 3% (perhaps even .05-.2% less) at the time, so it wasn't egregious like the 5% markups we see today.

The pending amount will typically show in DCC for the transaction regardless of the selection, but the posted amount will reflect if DCC has actually been charged. Who is your card issuer and what type is it (Visa or MC)? Has the issuer been good about getting cases of DCC charged in local currency?

Just experienced a case of forced DCC in the Cayman Islands; a rum cake shop outside of the cruise port where swiping a USD card immediately makes the terminal display:

"Account 4123...
U$ Amt?"

There is no way to charge the card in Cayman dollars; pressing 1 to start the sale says "Swipe or Insert" and as soon as a USD card is swiped it goes to U$; same if a USD card is inserted. The staff seemed to know about the scam and, to their credit, were willing to try several different things to avoid DCC but the terminal automatically selected USD anytime it figured out the card was USD. One of the clerks swiped their Cayman issued card, which shows up as "CI$ Amt?".

I didn't actually make a purchase since they couldn't figure out how to do it without DCC, so I don't have a photo of the receipt. I ended up getting rum cakes elsewhere instead.

Did you try saying "no" at that point? I've seen that prompting in Ireland. No is the correct answer.

The cancel button appeared to just end the transaction. It was expecting an amount to be typed in and the soft buttons didn't do anything.

Wait, so it wanted THEM to type a sale amount in USD? That doesn't sound like DCC... that sounds like a dual-currency account on their end...

I think this was the case since there was no opportunity to enter the CI$ amount. We're they just going to key in 1.2x the CI$ amount or was there another exchange rate applied? I'd like to see this setup to see if there's a "convenience fee" for paying in USD. The way DCC normally works is that the cashier keys in the amount in local currency, swipes/inserts the card, and that's when DCC happens.

The Chase IHG MC is about the mid-rate (as per xe.com), while the Chase Visa cards are worse. Not 2.6% worse, but definitely worse.

See this Chase foreign exchange rates thread.

Visa cards have worse exchange rates, in my experience, than the other networks. Half a percent or so.

Had two hotel stay transactions in India so far, no sign of DCC. I have been using my Sams Mastercard, pin never asked. I used my UNFCU card at the airport to pay for excess baggage, I was asked a pin. Again no DCC.

I did track the FX rates in 2013 and 2014 using Chase cards in various countries in Asia, Europe, and Oceanic.

The rates Chase used were exact to the rates published by Visa.com on the posting dates.

Maybe things have changed? I will look at my recent transactions in China and calculate again.

I just responded on the Chase FX thread that I found my transactions in China using CSP in the recent month did not have the 1% over Visa rate.

DCC'ed in Poland
 

Well, doing a bit of traveling here in Poland and just got hit 3 times for DCC charges. I don't remember this being nearly as much of a problem back in 2009-10 but I was here again about 14 months ago and was DCCed at a gas station in Zgorzelec.

In the most recent cases, two from gas stations and one from a well-known international pizzeria none of them gave the option to select PLN instead of CAD. In the case from today which is freshest in my memory, there were no indication (as usual) on the hand-held PIN terminal that I would be billed in anything other than PLN and of course the cash register showed the bill in PLN.

PKO Bank Polski seems to do most of the processing of credit card transactions in Poland and in all three cases, one in Warszawa and two in Szczecin, there was never a choice to select local currency on my part.

In the case of one of the gas stations (named after a Dutch crustacean) two days ago I was there for a fill-up and was specifically asked if I wanted the transaction in PLN. Today, a different cashier said nothing and without warning until the final receipts were given to me back with my Visa, I was slammed with the DCC and of course on a 85L fill up this can be prohibitive. :mad:

I called my bank in Canada (you know who you are RBC) and of course they did their usual denials and recriminations. They have the worst charge-back department known to man. As before, I get the usual well if you entered in PIN then there's nothing we can do... story. I offered to explain to them in both official languages that the PIN had nothing to do with the amount entered on the cash register and that at no time at all was a currency amount ever shown on the client PIN handset. In fact, when I wanted to do Paypass, the gas station refused. It was a bizarre experience. :(

So now, I was told by some guy at RBC that I should 'scan' (because I always bring my scanner with me when I travel) the receipts for the three transactions and they will 'look into it'. I told him that was not interested in really disputing the entire amounts (I pay my bills) but I will not be hosed for some fraudulent DCC. At the very beginning of the conversation he had even asked me if I knew how much the overage was for the DCC and I told him that this was something he should be determining himself given that if I had proceeded with the transactions correctly, the currency would have been converted by Visa themselves.

In these cases it seems like having a Chip & PIN is worse than the US-style magnetic strip cards. At least with mag strip there is a better opportunity to dispute the charge where the bank cannot turn around and claim that you entered in your PIN and so 'their hands are tied'. Maybe I should start looking at using my Discover and Amex cards which are without chip? At least neither of them have foreign currency commissions.

Signatures, or no CVM at all, just an authorization?

Only signature. Since Sams has an offline pin, I was hoping it would for a pin transaction. I had made sure at one of the hotels I asked for card not to be swyped hoping for a pin. My guess both hotels had inline pin verification enabled and thus Sams card did not trigger a pin. The UNFC is better in that I do get asked a pin.

I ordered a card reader, so I should be able to update card peek results of all my cards in about 10 days.

Thanks. My WF card is offline PIN, but I think it means they don't want their clients stranded at train stations; they can sign for their own lunches! Just discovered today that UNFCU balances have a whopping 7 day payment period from statement closing (with e-statements enabled). Fortunately, I had a spare $9 in my accounts to cover it immediately.

The scammed amount should be easy to figure out though from your end-take the CADPLN rate effective on that day, multiply it by the original amount in PLN and add RBC'S 2.5% FX fee.
Also AMEX in Canada does have FX fees (unless you are using USD cards, in which case you should have also used a USD chip and signature Visa.)

And MasterCard's rules for a chargeback just stayed you have to claim that you weren't given a choice to transact in the desired currency, which is true. In case of a chargeback, you wouldn't get credited the difference - although the issuer can certainly offer this so you're not personally out any money. For chargebacks they would simply rerun the transaction in PLN for the CADPLN rate on that day for MasterCard.

I moved $5k to my savings account with UNFCU and enabled automatic deduction of the full balance each due date. This way, I do not have to remember. Interestingly one can pay from a non UNFCU account as one time transaction, but they do NOT allow you to set automatic full deduction from an external linked account. I know of no other bank that does it (Kohls also has NO auto payment of bill). Anyway I will make sure I keep a good balance so I am never late in paying my monthly full balance.

Just to let you all know what happened in this case:

I complained to the merchant (Sukhothai Hotel, Bangkok) and to the bank of my credit card in Singapore.
Sukhothai Hotel told me that "they were not aware" that I had been charged in SGD but offered to refund the amount.
Turns out the bank in Singapore is adding 0.8% service fee to the DCC amount!!
In the end Sukhothai Hotel refunded the amount in SGD and the bank refunded the 0.8% service fee.
I told Sukhothai to charge me the THB amount at the exchange rate of the date of the transaction which they told me they couldn't do and then they asked how much I was willing to pay in SGD. I took the mid rate (interbank) for the transaction date and converted to SGD - this was the amount Sukhothai charged me.
In the end the total amount I paid was more than SGD 40 lower than originally charged. (which was about 7% of the amount)
In the process I exchanged 6 emails with the hotel and 3 with the bank, a lot of work for them so I hope they learned a lesson........

Perhaps the answer to the following question is somewhere upthread - I apologize if it is:

How common is DCC for foreign cardholders when visiting the USA?

We have often speculated that it's not that common in the US. My sister-in-law visited San Francisco last month, and I only saw two examples. It was very easy to opt out if you knew what DCC was. You can read my summary here.

I called them up today and inquired some more, and yes, they have a dual currency account, and they cannot select which currency to charge you in. USD cards get USD, all other currencies get KYD.

The prices in the stores were priced in both currencies, but the KYD pricing was more advantageous than using their in-house conversion rate.

The unfortunate thing there is that the conversion rate should be the same since the exchange rate is fixed at 1 KYD = 1.2 USD.

Some experience from my visit to Turkey just now:

At ATMs, I either had a mild form of DCC (single question, easily avoidable by pressing "No", even if probably still lots of people will fail for it for it's wording) or none. At shops, didn't experienced any DCC attempt at all. So far so good..

Would be curious to know if anyone has first-hand knowledge but I suspect that DCC at points of sale has been outlawed in Turkey at some point over the last 2-3 years. I've never encountered it, even in super-touristic areas where prices are quoted in Euros - in those few places (only really encountered in Antalya thus far) they seem to be converting from the quoted EUR prices into TL at a surprisingly fair exchange rate before you even swipe your card. (Quoting reservations in Euros and taking payments in TL at the date of departure is a really annoying practice, but it's not the same as DCC.) Discount clothing retailer LC Waikiki has Garanti Bank-branded signage in some of its stores promoting DCC as a value-added benefit, but I've never even been offered DCC there when paying with a US credit card. It's pretty nice that DCC seems to be nonexistent for purchase transactions, though counterbalanced by the fact that merchants in most of Istanbul have persistent problems getting chip-and-signature (and especially Chase products for some reason) to process. Protip for US card users: tell the cashier your card is "shifresiz" and suggest that they process it as a Garanti Bank card if it doesn't go through at first.

The ATM's, on the other hand, are a whole different animal. I've been offered DCC rates as bad as 5.5% (BNP Paribas/TEB having that dubious honor). ING, Deniz and Garanti also try to hit you with it. For Garanti, one assumes they must be making some serious cash - they actually have an ad in the domestic terminal at AYT urging travelers to choose their ATMs to "benefit" from DCC and bragging about the number of currencies they support. If you don't want to deal with DCC offers and/or want to support non-DCC banks in principle, try YapiKredi, Sekerbank and Halkbank. Think Vaktif and Akbank are also OK if I remember correctly.

I got stuck with DCC at a Paris restaurant. I handed my arrival+ to the waiter and without saying anything he ran my card through the card reader, pushed a few buttons and presented me with a receipt with DCC. I protested and told him to charge me in euros and not dollars. He claimed that he had charged me in euros and the receipt was just "showing me" what the charge translated to in dollars. I told him that this was incorrect and asked him if HE had chosen USD on the terminal. He said he had and it doesn't matter if he chooses USD or euros that it is "the same thing." I told him that it was in fact not the same thing. He seemed very confused and I further explained to him what DCC was and why it was bad. He still seemed confused and seemed slightly annoyed that I was complaining so much about it. His coworkers starting speaking to each other (they were speaking in French so I have no idea what they were saying) but eventually one of his workers chimed in and said something to the effect of that I should just pay in cash in the future (I think he honestly meant this in a sincere fashion and not in a rude way). He gave me a card with the restaurant contact information and suggested if I was still unhappy to "talk to my bank about it." I eventually gave up, circled the euro amount and signed the slip. I figured the worst case scenario is I eat the ~$1.50 difference which is better than creating an even bigger scene and potentially having the waiter try and get the police involved if I refused to sign the slip (I'm not sure what he actually would have done if I refused to sign, I'm just saying it isn't worth finding out). I contacted Barclays about this and after talking to a complaints representative they are making me submit the receipt and problem in writing. The representative said she knew what DCC was but I got the impression that she didn't seem to think it was that big of a deal. I asked the representative if this is a common complaint and she said I was the first person she had complain about DCC. I made some comment about most people probably don't realize when this happens to them. Anyways, I find DCC so frustrating and wish there was a way to ban it so I didn't have to worry about it.

I traveled to Kazakhstan this month. At all places including the hotel I stayed in I always asked to pay in local currency. I was never given a USD bill. But I did see my colleagues who were not that alert, who paid in USD. What I found was that the DCC in Almaty and Astana was actually better than the converted rate. While in India it was horrible. When I checked in, they do a hold in USD and I do not protest DCC there, because it gives me a look in to the DCC rates. The USD rate was above 62 and the DCC rate was around 59 Rupees. DCC varies from country to country.

Let us know how the chargeback goes. I think the vast majority of people don't realize that they've been screwed, and that's why there aren't many complaints. This is also why I'd rather have a chip-and-PIN system. If the waiter hands you the terminal and things look fishy, you can always fat finger the PIN to end the transaction.

The good thing with MasterCard is that their DCC chargeback options seem, in theory, to be far more permissive than Visa's. With MasterCard you simply have to state that you weren't given the option to pay in the currency of your choosing. As long as you defaced the receipt, it should work in your favor assuming that the issuer is favorable to a chargeback.

Avis Sleazy DCC
 

Y'all probably already know that when you make reservation on the Avis US site the final page always shows USD - but that is not DCC because I found the rate used to convert the display was quite close to the actual rate.

What Avis does is, its billing system almost always automatically bill you in USD. Even the contract itself in many European countries would have the sneaky clause there that YOU agree to be billed in the currency of your card... We have to always make sure not just at the pick up to change that clause, but also at the return to make sure the close out statement is in Euro or whatever currency.

The last 3 rentals were on AMEX Plat that was in his profile so there was no such hassle.

However we want to use Citi Premier on a May rental in Germany because Premier changes its earning scale effective on Apr 19 to 3x on travel expenses, while the AMEX PLAT is a straight 1x. We also dont want to cumulate any more Membership Reward points in preparing to ditch the PLAT card soon because now Citi's Prestige Card is a serious contender of AMEX PLAT (with better benefits actually).

I went to husband's Avis Preferred profile to change the card on file. When I put in Mastercard, it immediately brought up a Note, in the wordings as if in your benefit, that Mastercard and Visa offer an opportunity for the members to pay in their cards currency. AND, the box of the Acceptance Statement is already checked! The 3% DCC fee is mentioned, but is the LAST SENTENCE of a bunch of mumble jumble about Avis would always use the exchange rate at the time of the transaction blah blah blah.

In other words if you use Mastercard / Visa in your Avis Profile, the system DEFAULT you to agree on DCC! :td:

Anyone who does not know about DCC / not read the long paragraph to the very last sentence, would have mindless click the SAVE button and be duped. :mad: