This happens occasionally in the US too. A familiar case is British Airways. They say they process the transaction out of Florida, and the transaction is in USD natively (no currency conversion is happening), but you'll see a foreign transaction fee if your card has one. :eek:

Yep. I've encountered this a few times when purchasing software licenses online if the company or its payment processor is located outside of the US (e.g. independent software developers that use Paddle to manage their payments). Now I make sure to use a card without foreign transaction fees in those cases.

Raised a dispute with my issuer for Airbnb.

I should have been charged €787 for a rental which as Mastercard rates was £695.30. Was charged £713. This was despite opening a German account, going via a VPN in Germany. They are obviously detecting the BIN/IIN range and determining the issuing country and charging the home currency (DCC).

Let's see what my issuer says.

Expect to be banned from AirBnB. No proof it just seems likely. Seriously it's such a horrible company I see the as no big loss.
.

AirBnB will ban a customer for a legitimate chargeback? (I agree with no real loss.)

As I said I don't know, but I would expect it with how they behave... thus why I said expect to be, not that he would be, but that he should expect it.

Next time try PayPal http://forum.hongkongcard.com/forumSE/show/21937 #4

(Disable PayPal's own DCC of course https://www.hongkongcard.com/forumSE/show/15295 #1)

I hope not, I haven't taken my holiday yet. If I get there and they've canceled it I will be taking legal action.

You disputed the charge for a hotel stay that hasn't yet occurred? Wow... That's daring.

I disputed the £18 charge which I paid because they applied DCC. My issuer has to accept the dispute (and they haven't contacted me yet), then it has to go do MasterCard, and they have to review it. By the time that all happens I'll be back home.

In hindsight, I should have put it on my Amex card and I would have got 2% cashback. This would have covered the charge.

While looking at my pile of millions at DKB I noticed that they warn users of DCC:
https://www.dkb.de/info/kostenfalle-umrechnung/ ^

Thank you for sharing, Majuki ;)

Turned out... DCC FEE again because this time Paypal Singapore is based in... Hong Kong of course!

Julien

Wait:

1. Do you mean a cross-border fee/foreign transaction fee (1% tacked onto your SGD transaction processed outside of Singapore) (I think HSBC Singapore does this) or true DCC (a non-SGD transaction converted into SGD by Paypal)?

2. Where is the Paypal merchant located and what is the original currency of the item you're paying for?

If this has been dealt with, sorry.

Last week in Iceland I was looking for which key to press to get the charge in ISK when the choice appeared on screen. Clerk had to explain that it was a matter of touching one or the other option directly, no button involved. Usually, we used NFC, but this one transaction seemed to go through as Samsung Pay via swipe slot (had to sign for a $5 coffee even with a PIN card).

On a more pleasant note, these days when I warn folks about DCC costing extra, they are often already aware of the need to choose local, not dollars. Folks may not grasp the details, but they get that in the long run they'll end up paying more that way.