For a change

No DCC attempt at any restaurant / retailer on recent trip that visited Italia, West Australia and Hong Kong.

The only DCC trap is from an ATM owned by BNL d'Italia.

We spent 10 days in Southern Italy Puglia region (the heel of the Italian boot) as well as days in Venice before and after the Puglia portion. Not a single DCC attempt.

Then we went to Perth Australia. Neither ATM nor POS had any DCC attempt.

After that we went to Hong Kong. Not a single restaurant showed DCC attempt. Had paid stays at Sheraton Macao and Marriott SkyCity - both were billed in local currency.

Thanks for the report. I haven't seen DCC in Italy, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The Marriott SkyCity definitely has it, but I've never had a problem opting out. DCC is present in Australia but uncommon compared to other places.

I've used multiple Euronet ATMs in different countries over the past 3 years. All of them bugged me to choose DCC but respected the choice to decline. Their fees are high too but I have a debit card that reimburses all fees.

Where are the forced DCC ATMs located?

As an aside, Euronet is actually an American company that operates these ATMs that try to trick tourists.

No idea as I just read about this on sites like TripAdvisor.

Personally I always use ATM of a real bank whether at airport or in town - that is because when there are issues, a bank can help you to resolve such on the spot. I have had ATM ran out of money without warning and no cash spit out, at Seoul airport. The ATM is owned by a Korean bank, next to the bank branch. They eventually sorted the things out but needed me to go down one level to their main office at the airport to get my money.
At Aix-en-Provence, a BNP ATM ate my card. They eventually retrieved the card from one level down the main floor (the ATMs are located at the street level outside the lobby) but obviously my ATM card ended somewhere at a lower level of the building.
Enough of the above to make me always use bank owned ATMs and if possible, always at banking hours.

I do the same because I believe (though I have no empirical proof) that one is far less likely encounter a "skimmer" attached to an ATM located at an actual bank than it is at a remote stand-alone ATM somewhere.

Yes.

Also in Europe there are many banks have their ATMs at indoor "foyers" instead of on the wall outside. That obviously is much safer. A lot of these "foyers" are locked electronically but any Visa card can open the door, when sliding thru the slid.

So yeah, the PayPal DCC opt-out is still possible from the payment page. However, you can apparently only do so from a PC and not from a mobile device; there's no hyperlink to do so on the latter. (At least for eBay purchases, anyway.)

Desktop PC screenshot:


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...316661cd63.png

Android app screenshot:

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...7961701a92.png

EDIT: while I was messing around with getting the screenshots, I also noticed that the change in currency choice didn't actually save. Maybe it only does so if I go through with the purchase?

BTW, I now have a pending charge of $14.77 on that C$19.59 according to Chase. eBay/PayPal's currency conversion was offering $1 to C$1.2768 (or $15.34) had I opted for it.

DCC scam in Poland
 

I was DCC scammed in Poland today as well. I went to a restaurant with colleages, paid the bill by credit card, used the contactless function and the the screen read ”XXX PLN - Enter PIN”, after entering the PIN, the screen displayed a Polish flag and the flag of my country, and the waitress asked ”Polish or your country?” I answered Polish, the waitress pressed the button below the Polish flag, but she also said, “I don’t know if we made it in time, we only have three seconds to press the button, otherwise it bills in your currency.“ And - we missed the deadline by a millisecond, so when the slip came out, DCC was applied. I didn’t want to make a fuss in front of colleages, so we just left (but without leaving any tips).

With a PIN, there's less recourse for DCC compared to a signature. You can always try for a chargeback with your card issuer to get them to rerun the transaction in local currency.

I will not try to charge back as the amount is small and it was the company card, the story was mostly to warn others of the practice.

(Not against you personally) that's why DCC still exists. In fact if I still have to do expense reports I'd prefer card currency.

If you know how to fill out expense reports, you already have the aptitude to look up correct numbers. If DCC really existed to accommodate lazy people, it would not need to employ deception or disguise itself.

I did have one employer (Big4 accounting firm at that) that made up their own rates for foreign spending regardless of what was incurred in HKD.

The expense tool at my current employer populates the rate based on the date of the transaction. For transaction amounts that I've encountered the default rate and the Visa rate are more or less similar. There is also the option to adjust the exchange rate manually on a per transaction basis.

I had a previous employer that also used a reference rate. If there were any deviations that showed a higher rate, one had to submit proof of the posted transaction amount. Again, without DCC, I didnt contest the rates because they evened out with Visa's rate.

Mrs. Majuki was ordering from books.com.tw and there is now DCC.

The DCC rate was $33.56 (1 TWD = 0.0346 USD) for an NT$970 purchase. It was claimed as a 4%. The pending transaction is $32.18, so 4.29% effective rate.