Yes, using Amex will avoid DCC. It's the same with Discover (but with more limited international acceptance, of course). JCB and UnionPay also do not have DCC. There is interoperability with Discover in theory but not in practice with JCB and UnionPay.

I read the article, and it's a good article. However, notice that it was a freelance author on behalf of American Express. If I were Amex, I would have reminded the author that American Express cards do not feature DCC (and list that as an advantage of using American Express where accepted internationally).

Noted briefly in the Wiki, but my mother came to Europe for a visit and when she used her US Visa card to make an ATM withdrawal at one of our major banks (the FX fees get refunded on her card), there was a tricky prompt showing the USD amount that was actually an attempt to get the user to accept DCC. It was when I saw the 14% markup noted that I hit 'decline' and the transaction went thru in EUR.

So DCC clearly extends to ATMs as well; not just merchant purchases.

The good thing about ATMs is that the prompts are always under the user's control, and we've never heard of a report of forced DCC with an ATM. The 14% rate sounds awful though!

They can really make it confusing though. We needed some cash urgently once and we kept thinking the transaction would cancel entirely if we said no, and did cancel out twice. We found another ATM. Same thing. Finally we ended up getting the money and hit with a big fee. The next time on same trip we were able to navigate it better and hit "no" or "cancel" at the right times and avoided DCC. We are reasonably sophisticated travelers but just didn't figure it out the first time. Our fault in the end, yes, and lesson learned, but still frustrating, and one of the reasons this DCC stuff agitates me so much.

As mentioned above, the first time one sees the message, you might think hitting "decline" would cancel out the entire transaction. No mention of 'paying in own currency' as in the case of buying from a merchant.
Perhaps this is a thing with US-issued cards only ? Because my European bank card (Mastercard) never prompts for DCC when paying or withdrawing cash in a foreign currency- I'm sure this would run afoul of EU consumer protection rules !

Definitely true. There's an Honest Guides YouTube video about this. The guy was talking about how Euronet ATMs will have default amounts way higher and try to force DCC versus when using a local card.

With ATMs it’s not just DCC. It can also be the ATM’s owner charging (apparently) whatever fees they wish.

The merchant can only use DCC if the transaction currency is your local currency. As I understand it, an authorisation to use DCC is considered to be invalid if the wrong currency was used, so it should be easy to have DCC undone by disputing the charge.It depends on where you are. Nordea cash machines in Denmark ask me to pay in SEK instead of DKK.Once, a Danish merchant asked for 250 SEK for a purchase, but when I declined DCC, my bank converted the DKK amount to just 200 SEK, so a neat 25% markup.

I was at the Dufry duty free shop at YVR today, and I noticed on the screen that there was a post-it note that said <-- Only CAD covering the lower right portion of the screen. I did a contactless payment, which resulted in a DCC prompt, and the note covered the DCC option. The cashier proactively said, "Press CAD."

I don't recall there being DCC on a contactless payment about a year ago. Mrs. Majuki didn't buy anything there during our last visit in May.

I'm not complaining, but I'm wondering what the motivation was to be corralling people toward opting out of DCC. I'm wondering if it was more than just trying to steer customers away from a bad exchange rate. There are two reasons I could think of: 1) they had chargebacks for people who unknowingly accepted DCC or 2) it is easier to remit any necessary duty to CBP since this shop was inside the preclearance area.

It must be hard enough to get customers interested in "Duty Free" prices. Sales people don't need another disincentive like DCC.

Normally, I'm not big into duty free myself. I wanted to buy some maple syrup for Mrs. Majuki, and since I was carry on only today, it was easier to make the purchase airside.

An ATM charging a fee only for non-DCC transactions
 

I saw this for the first time yesterday, in Poland: an ATM that charges a withdrawal fee only for non-DCC transactions. If I hadn't had a bank that reimburses that fee, accepting DCC would have made sense, as the total including the fee was converted to US$23.23 by my bank. https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ed42ee4ed8.jpg

That's pretty sneaky!

Honest Guide noticed this with ATMs in Prague. Another note was that the withdrawal amounts were much more reasonable with a local card versus a non-local card. For instance, it would offer $100, $200, and $300 withdrawal amounts (you could change manually) with a non-local card but $40, $60, and $80 amounts with a local card.

Oh, interesting. I had that experience here too but didn't think anything of it. There was a "quick 20 PLN" button (about $5), but when it got to the main choices they were in the thousands (more than $200) and I second-guessed my math before inputting my own number. It even timed out when I recalculated.