Thank you - I've been a longtime reader and decided it was time to post after seeing that you hadn't had reports in India. The hotel I stayed at (an Aloft) also tried to sneak through DCC at checkin, but I was able to nip that by checking the tiny opt-out box.

For the Oberoi, the merchant copy box was not checked. I asked the original waiter to bill in rupees, and he brought back the DCCd slip, which I defaced, and he then got a manager who was able to rerun the sale without DCC (but you'll notice it took 8 minutes...)

Yeah, don't believe it either when they say, "The USD amount is just for your information." Another popular line is, "Check the box, and it'll be XXX currency." You did the right thing by defacing the receipt, and thanks for providing the reports. Starwood Properties have been pulling the DCC stunt for awhile. Was the box in the fine print on the check-in slip or on the credit card receipt? I did notice at the Oberai that the timestamp was 8 minutes apart.

It's far better to opt out of DCC at the source versus attempting a chargeback through your issuer. Most of the time the issuer will issue a courtesy credit, but sometimes the clueless CSRs don't know about DCC and will refuse to open a chargeback case. To avoid these potential headaches it's best to prevent DCC at the source. It's hard to tell how many places are complicit with DCC or simply don't know. There are definitely proprietors who are guilty here, but I would say it's not the norm.

When I was in London and Dublin in August, not a single restaurant I went to even tried to DCC me. The only place that I had a problem was the Dublin DoubleTree - Burlington Road. They used DCC with a 5% free without ever mentioning it and without asking.

What was the resolution? Were you able to get them to opt you out of DCC or did you realize it after the fact?

They charged the deposit direct in EUR, so I had no reason to suspect they'd charge the balance in USD. Both payment lines are formatted identically. As I used a card from Chase, which doesn't bother to give the original foreign currency figures online, I didn't notice until much later. Indeed, I would never have noticed if they hadn't stiffed us on HH points. It was only when I calculated the total exactly to determine exactly how many points we'd missed out on that I saw the discrepancy.

As for resolution, they say they will refund and re-bill me, but haven't done so yet.

Last week I was in India again, and this time militantly prepared. In the country club where we had issues last time they remembered me and asked me to wait while the cashier called the contact person who had recently installed the new POS. He called the guy and said 'give me clear instructions on how to his able the DCC nonsense' and the guy on the other end guided him step by step (function+44+0 disables it for that terminal ...+1 reactivated it) ;) So no trouble there.

While waiting for the flight home the wife found something at the duty free store in DEL. I volunteered to pay for it and clearly told the cashier 'do not do DCC, I want to be charged in INR!' and he promptly charged me in EUR which got me really pissed. His supervisor jumped and resolved it though.

Though I did have that actually happen to me, where it really was, at the Flying Pig Uptown in Amsterdam. USD amount on my receipt, but my receipt was printed before currency selection on the terminal. I watched her hit the EUR button and I got charged in EUR, despite my USD receipt I got. The one I signed was EUR. It was weird.

Now I get to be like the merchants who say, "Excellent choice, sir!" :D I can see why you got really upset at the duty free. I used to give cashiers the benefit of the doubt, but I don't anymore in most cases. You have to believe at airport duty free they know what they're doing, so the cashier's actions seemed deliberate and intentional. This is opposed to the cafe in Brisbane where the DCC caught me off guard, and the girl had a thoroughly confused look on her face.

I've had it happen that way too at Chung Yo Department Store where the transaction is initially charged with DCC and must have been modified after the transaction was initially complete. It had just so happened that a prior transaction had preemptively disabled DCC, so when I saw the exchange rate and DCC verbiage on a later receipt I flipped out. The problem is there is really little consistency to how DCC is implemented, so each situation can have a different twist.

In short, don't believe everything at face value that you're told when it comes to DCC. If you say the exchange rate is just for my information, show me what input you made to make sure my currency selection was honored? If there is no tick box/opt-out box that you get, proceed with extreme caution. It would be your word against the merchant's in a chargeback. If you get a check box, especially on carbon copy paper, make sure the merchant has additional input to honor your local currency selection. Some places do honor the tick mark (Disneyland in Hong Kong), and some places don't (Greyhound Cafe in Hong Kong).

Hkg do day 1 - we only used the foreign spending at Intercontinental Lobby Lounge. No DCC even without asking for hkd charging.

Dinner was at a hawker market place that surprisingly took cards, but I didn't arrange for a visitor to try. It was a Hang Seng terminal anyway so DCC choice is expected to be honoured.

I think what happens with many processors who support dcc and want the merchnts to try to push it is when an out of country card is either swiped or dipped, as soon as the system recognizes the card's currency is not the local one, it prints a preliminary slip listing the amount in the currency of the card. This is supposed to be shown to the scamee to make his decision as to whether he wishes to be scammed or pay in local currency. What sometimes happens is, of course, the cashier simply fails to offer the choice and chooses for himself or herself that the sucker in front of him or her wishes to be scammed and has one of the lies all ready in case the scamee notices.

Thanks for the report back! Enjoy the DO. Hang Seng has always respected DCC choices, right? I think you said Francfranc uses them too.

Yeah, I firmly believe the entire setup is deliberately designed to get you to take the bait. And sometimes there is just the illusion of choice but no real choice is available (locked down terminals, uncooperative merchant, etc.). It's also brain games because even if you're in Ireland for instance and the merchant says, "That'll be 83 dollars and 42 cents." most people don't even pause to question... huh... what? wait a minute? Why are you quoting me in dollars? This country uses the euro. Then they sign and implicitly agree to the DCC amount without realize they just got ripped off.

It's also like the terminals that give a choice of payment currencies the default is always the DCC currency. ATMs make it seem like the world will end if you don't lock in the exchange rate. "Caution. If you use the networks exchange rate we have no control over how much you'll be charged. Do you agree to not hold us liable and use the network rate?" I'll take my chances, thank you... I think I'll be just fine. POS terminals also are designed to default to DCC and require counterintuitive steps to disable. You have to press no/cancel, and how many times have you seen cashiers repeatedly press the Accept/OK green button compulsively? Again, this is all designed to get people to accept DCC by default.

Most cashiers just hit enter repeatedly to get the customer copy after printing the merchant copy signature slip. So even if the POS terminal asks the cashier "so what currency did the customer tick on the signature slip?" they just accept the default suggested DCC currency ;):rolleyes:

Correct. For example, at Isaac's Hostel in Dublin (where they were aware of DCC and happy to help me avoid it, acknowledging it was a rip off), I said to her when handing the card "charge in EUR, not USD" and she said no problem, just hit "NO" when it asks "amount OK?"

Here is how it went:

She inserted the card (reader on her end)
PIN pad popped up "US$XX.XX Amount OK?"
Hitting no caused the transaction to proceed in EUR

How the f*** is that "active choice" as the networks require? It's worded so that you'd think the option is yes or don't use the card. Nothing about the prompt indicates that no results in an EUR transaction.

:eek::eek::eek::eek: Wow! I'm surprised you didn't get the, "Excellent choice, sir!" I'm happy that some establishments have wised up to this.

The message "US$XX.XX Amount OK?" was similar to the ANZ terminal I encountered at a cafe in Brisbane where the cashier said, "Press OK." I felt like I had just stepped on a landmine and had to make my next move carefully. Likewise, I pressed No as in, "No, that's not ok!" and the transaction completed in AUD. But it's sneaky.