alexmt "US$xx.xx OK?"
Majuki "Press OK"

Add my Maldivian "Print next receipt?" as well please.

HKG Do is going to Rainbow restaurant in Lamma tonight, I'm not sure if the visitors want to card it (cos whoever does will end up with a lot of loose change - I already have a bagful of banknotes from last night). Maybe LKF bar crawling after if they are so inclined, but a void will be hard to do (clubs and bars are a place is definitely use AE if I'm overseas).

Not expecting DCC for next four trips:

- BKK is as compliant as TPE (meaning they offer it, but they give you quote slip and honour whatever choice you make)
- SIN probably flogs merchants for non-compliance (same as late luggage in Changi)
- Hokkaido doesn't seem to get DCC when we there last May
- Hanoi doesn't DCC when we we there last June

Well, given I'm male, but one of the most obviously genderqueer/genderfluid people you'll meet - very few people have the nerve to call me sir or mister for fear of offending me :) I actually had person once call me sir, then immediately apologise. And I'm like "gender is crap, I don't care what pronouns you use."

But other than that aside, no, most merchants I've experienced are okay with turning off DCC. Only in Ireland is DCC a huge problem, and there just use Amex/Discover, to be honest.

That said, I've also never been refused a signature transaction and some of those other goodies. Been forced to hand over my passport, but not refused.

I think your case was the worst because "Print next receipt?" gives no indication that DCC is about to happen. At least those of us with USD denominated cards don't have to worry about DCC in the Maldives.

While I have yet to go to Thailand or Singapore, I remember the reports, including yours, indicating Thailand is like Taiwan with the quote slip and honoring the choice. I would expect the penalty for forcing DCC in Singapore to be a S$1000 fine and three lashes. :D

My experience in Japan has been limited (fewer than 10 transactions) since the only trip I have made outside of Narita was a prepaid tour, but I've never seen DCC. This includes two times at the ANA Crowne Plaza at Narita Airport and two purchases from airport newsstands.

I haven't been to Vietnam, so I can't comment there either.

Please keep us updated on the DCC situation for the HKG DO. We went to Paisano's in Soho, and I didn't want to risk it. I ended up using my Octopus Card to pay for the meal. Perhaps I'm being overly paranoid, but I feel like places like that with tons of expats are ripe targets for DCC.

I don't have a problem with picture ID verification, and I'm not well read enough to know where it is the law versus a store policy. For instance, Spain requires (required?) photo ID for signature credit card purchases to curb fraud. It's easier to let them glance at the passport than fight over that. (I need to save some energy in case I need to ward off DCC. :D)

The easiest thing to do is use AmEx - I've done this before - or Discover, but I prefer some of my other cards for the various rewards programs. I tend to find that Visa provides a better exchange rate than AmEx, but this is far from conclusive.

Hang Seng DCC (Rainbow restaurant) - currency selection finalised *after* signing
 

http://www.hongkongcard.com/webedito...049_51022.jpeg

(courtesy Oreck, redacted copy published with his permission).

Offered rate: $6.487. Visa rate: $6.7695. Scalp: 4.17%

We had a combination of overseas and local (my) cards paying for the HKG DO dinner tonight. I glanced at the first slip to come back (slip on right) and started foaming in the mouth:

Me: (In Cantonese) (Pointing at the verbage) "This shouldn't be here! We don't want this! Can we make it go away???"
Waiter: "Tick it and its HKD"
[Huge amounts of arm waving on my part]: "It never is tick HKD and you get HKD. You must press a button. Do we have to press a button?"
Waiter continued: "There is no further action required. It will be processed as HKD."

I just blew up like Fukushima Daiichi Plant One at this point. I demanded to see the card terminal to have this voided. The waiter and Oreck followed me reluctantly.


I should note Oreck's position on this - he understands there may be some scalping involved, but he does not want to take issue with it. I respect that, it's his financial prerogative, and I admit to somewhat hijacking his transaction to pursue my own research for this thread.


In this event, no scalping took place.
At the Rainbow cashier desk, a lot got cleared up:

1. The cashier does indeed make a currency selection at the terminal after seeing the cardholder's tick box.

2. The cashier printed a courtesy copy of Oreck's slip (similar to my Maldives Taj Exotica courtesy copy but called a Reprint slip here) which had no DCC verbage and showed HKD charging very clearly (slip on left).

3. The cashier noted there has been similar concerns/objections from previous customers over their DCC offering, and they have taken steps to ensure cardholder choice is respected.

4. The cashier that had the cardholder ticked nothing, the card currency amount will be presumed to be selected, which is non-compliant but not the biggest DCC sin in the world.

I withdrew my objection and advised Oreck to sign and keep the cardholder and Reprint copies, which he did.

Another FTer at the DO also paid using her USD card. I demanded the Reprint for her also which was also HKD-only

So, with respect, I hope you apologised to the Rainbow staff (and Oreck)! :)

christep: I didn't apologise explicitly to the Rainbow staff.

They explained their system had caused previous objections by other visitors. And the waiter did misstate what their cashier was going to do.

I conceded they were right after all after hearing the cashier's explanation and advised Oreck and ColoradoGal it's safe to sign the DCC slips.

I don't feel an unconditional apology is called for because their waiter did misrepresent what was going to happen. But I did advised other FTers in the restarant and publishing their system online here they are ultimately compliant.

I did let Oreck know his slips were going to be used in this DCC thread.

I can picture you doing this. :D It's similar to my behavior at Hong Kong Disneyland, but at least there the girl said, "Here.. I pushed this button. Here is the Hong Kong Dollar receipt." She handed me the thermal paper receipt which did show HKD.

I think the response to the "tick [ ]XXX and it's XXX" should now be a request for a courtesy copy/reprint of the receipt. It's like your case in the Maldives or my case at Chung Yo Department Store in Taichung (after I dragged my wife and the sales assistant to the cashier). Just having the box ticked on the carbon copy receipt without any other reassurance makes me nervous. Fortunately in HK at least the carbon copy receipts present a solid case for a chargeback provided that the issuer will follow through with the chargeback.

It's good that Rainbow honors currency selections, but I feel like this is far from the norm, and far more cases are like Greyhound Cafe than Rainbow.

I'm happy that Oreck allowed you to take control of the transaction, but it does bother me when people who know they're being taken for a ride don't object. I equate it to the Chinese tea ceremony scam where some even try to justify it after the fact. "Well, I had a nice time, and I even got some tea out of it." With DCC there are four groups of people: Militantly Anti-DCC, Passive Anti-DCC, Ignorant about DCC, and Pro-DCC.

You and I fall into the Militantly Anti-DCC category. We try to educate as many people and merchants as possible about avoiding DCC. We will make a scene at merchants for even attempting DCC and escalate as need be, involving managers, voiding transactions, fiddling with the terminal, calling the acquirer, etc. If all else fails, we follow through with a chargeback via our issuer.

The Passive Anti-DCC people are the most frustrating. Those are the types who are with us in spirit - they agree that DCC is a ripoff - but they don't want to make a fuss over things. They opt out of DCC wherever possible, but just accept it whenever they get struck with it even knowing that they're getting a marked up price.

I would say the largest category is those who are ignorant. These people can even be persuaded by merchants to accept DCC. However, most of the time there is no need. They passively accept DCC by not ticking the box or knowing that they have to opt out. I'm sure many in this category would be upset after getting educated about DCC, but the trouble is educating enough of them to reach critical mass. Right now merchants can argue, "See... a large percentage of people accept DCC, so it's a service our customers value." However, silence these days does not mean consent. If each customer had all of the objective facts and then made a clear and conscious choice, I think DCC acceptance rates would be a fraction of what they are today.

Finally, there is the Pro-DCC camp. Now, these people aren't necessarily in favor of DCC. Actually, I think they could be ardent opponents of DCC if you could communicate it clearly. But these are the types who make the comments "Why can't they show the price in real money?" "How much is this in real money?! I don't know how much this is." "Oh, you can accept USD? Now here's a merchant who understands the value of the dollar!" (...and how to profit off of a customer of this type. :D)

The above is, of course, not logically accurate. A large percentage of people accepted it because they didn't mind it. That's way different from it being a useful service.

However, the whole game has changed recently. A couple of years ago, the rare times I saw DCC it was around 3% and most people didn't have fee-free credit cards. If my credit card charges 2.7-3% and the DCC charge is 3%, do I really care? If have to be charged by someone, I might even prefer to give the merchant's bank the 3% instead of my credit card's bank.

Since then, three things have changed:
1) More banks (at least in the USA) are offering credit cards with no foreign exchange fee.
2) More banks (esp. in Australia, though I've read of the USA too) are charging a foreign transaction fee even if the transaction is in their own currency, which makes DCC an addition, not an alternative, to the issuing bank's charge!
3) Most importantly, DCC charges can be 5%, which is way above what any credit card charges and therefore totally unacceptable and uncompetitive in all cases.

It will take time for consumers to realise that what used to be an innocuous choice has become a major rip-off due to those three factors.

Just saw my first DCC attempt in Australia.

At Sydney Airport Domestic Terminal, when I tried to purchase some pasta, the ANZ terminal, after "cheque, saving, credit" selection screen, prompted something about FxRate, and gave me two choices of Yes and No. To select No, I had to click "clear", and then click "Enter" directly below to accept $A amount.

To add to the confusion, the "cheque, saving, credit" buttons are other three buttons directly below the screen, so the DCC part take you to another section of the keypad.

Compliant, but a little bit tricky.

Other than that, haven't encountered DCC anywhere else (over 100 transactions).

It's about 2.5% foreign currency conversion fee for Canadian cards generally.

Fortunately Canadian banks don't seen to apply foreign transaction fee yet, unlike their US, Australian and (increasingly) HK counterparts.

But still, in oreck's case he would be most likely 1.67% out of pocket.

Many if not most Americans when they travel are shocked to find out the US dollar does not reign supreme. They expect everybody to be able to express prices in the only currency they understand or wish to understand namely US dollars. When they pay cash, it is too much for many of them to take a few minutes to learn the coins and be able to count out small amounts, can't get it through their heads that in most countries today, the smallest paper money is 5 units of whatever. And for the most part never think clerks are trying to rip them off (in fairness to the clerks, often students, they are just doing what they're told). And when a clerk tells them they can pay in US dollars so they'll know exactly how much something costs, they are amazed at the courtesy being extended on a credit card payment. Simply the way it is.

Can you name and shame the establishment? Was it a franchise restaurant or single location? This seems like the terminal at the cafe in Brisbane, which was also ANZ. It's definitely counterintuitive having to press clear. Also, did they had you the terminal presumably for you to enter your PIN? I think that's the only thing that saved me at the cafe in Brisbane since I had full control of the terminal.

I would still echo your sentiment that DCC is rare in Australia since I've had at least 100+ transactions there over the last four years and have only seen it twice.

I am willing to give clerks the benefit of the doubt, but it's on a case-by-case basis. As I said before, it's just a brain trick, and when someone is presented with a receipt in the home currency usually doesn't stop and question why. If I were naive, I'd probably sign the receipt (and even sign in a tip in a USD amount) without even thinking about it. I would stop to question, "Wait... I'm in the UK. Why am I getting a bill in USD when the native currency is GBP? What's going on here?" In fact, you're more likely to leave a better tip without pausing to do calculations.

I bet if you gave 100 DCC-naive Americans a restaurant receipt with DCC abroad that was presented in the familiar US format of having a line to sign in the tip, that close to all 100 would sign it and probably sign in a tip in the USD amount too. Even if DCC verbiage were included at the bottom with a 5% DCC markup, I imagine you'd get few to question the charge. Learning to spot DCC and methods to thwart it takes experience and an ability to watch for details.

unless you use a prepaid AX (for USD only)/Sears MC/Marriott Visa (all of these 3 have no FX fee for CAD denominated cards.)
Paypower prepaid does have a foreign transaction fee but this can be a good thing (I have been able to pull USD at a CIBC machine in YYZ that charged bank rate, that is, before my paypower was cancelled.)

It's the pasta counter at Sydney Airport domestic terminal. I had the full control of the terminal because Australia uses PINs now, and it's a fast food counter that they have the terminal right in front of you so you do the inserting.

As long as it's not forced, I'm OK~