DCC / Dynamic Currency Conversion in Thailand
 

I thought there had been a extant thread but a quick search didn't locate it.

Two weeks ago in the south a resto auto charged me in USD because 'the bank told us to charge in the cc's home country currency'. They apparently didn't read the part on the receipt that says the customer has been offered the option. It took them a good 10 minutes to figure out how to charge my card in baht but they were figuring it out in good faith.

The bank was Thana Chart.

Today in the north east at Tesco the same thing happened (auto charged to USD though there was no mention whether this was the default).

It's bad enough this happens at hotels but clearly it's metastasizing.

I can sail more or less serenely through (small scale) taxi overcharging. But the DCC scam sends me into a barely-controlled fury at hotel check-outs, and has initiated long-running email exchanges over just a few dollars. If one more agent tries to explain it is a service much-welcomed by their clients ...:mad::mad:

I've always assumed the merchant gets a kick-back from the bank in this scam. It's (pretty much) small beer on an individual basis, but mounts up to a tidy sum across the Tesco network - or on the scale it is employed to scam hotel guests.

I'm asked every time I use my card if I want the charge in USD or THB. Hotels, restaurants, gold shop, etc.

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Maybe you are special ;)

Even at hotels where I have asked this to be put into my profile, I still sometimes get charged DCC - though that's really not exclusive to TH...

I have only encountered one merchant asking which currency I'd prefer, and that one is 100% consistent in doing so. And never bats an eyelash when I say baht.

Also only ever had one instance of having a transaction automatically processed in USD without having been asked our preference (beware of Villa markets). The clerk was very non-LOS about it when we insisted on having it voided and reprocessed, especially when the system crashed right after refunding the USD transaction, forcing an old-fashioned manual plate process for the baht transaction :D

Link to the master thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...er-thread.html

They do.. normally a discount on processing fees.

Same at Chiang Mai Ram Hospital.

When you say nothing or forget to say it, you will be DCC'ed. When you ask to be charged in THB no problem.

Maybe that's why they started asking. I used my CC 2 days ago at Villa and they asked USD or THB.

I've seen that one and there's an earlier one in the China forum (somewhere) but there had been mention, or so I thought, in this forum.

It's interesting to see the places where others have experienced this dastardly act.

Duty Free at BKK airport have to be watched.

I take the initiative now and emphasise baht when i hand the card over and then again when I get to the person actually processing it.

Once I've had some BS when not doing this in advance, but it's usually easily solved.

And not just for currency conversion, either.

I only use my credit card here in hotels, and since I am nearly always at SGS,.... IME they run the credit card and give you a receipt showing the amounts in THB and USD, as well as the conversion rate (which one could also calculate, of course, on a calculator). Then they ask your preference for the currency in which you'd like to be charged. Seems to work fine for me; but, as I said, my experience is fairly limited. More recently I've been paying in cash (THB). Don't care for the credit card foreign exchange fee on the SPG AMEX.

Heresy... paying cash? There are plenty of cards one can use to rack up points effectively (and I also keep my SPG AMEX firmly in pocket even when staying at an SPG property in Bangkok).

Not only effectively, but without any foreign currency fees... CapOne, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Citi Executive AAdvantage all readily come to mind. There is a thread in the credit card forum listing all cards without forex.

Even for SPG points, I would never use an amex overseas (except platinum, of course, which is a whole other ball of wax).

Back on topic, I'm surprised how many people have encountered this in Thailand. Even in PRC, which is notorious for DCC, it's just not something I really have encountered. Guess I just jinxed myself there :D

I just bought my wife new glasses at a shop in Paragon. 23,000 THB. They automatically charged me in USD (DCC). $718. I told them to reverse it and charge me in THB. Just appeared on my Chase CC statement at $688. More than a 4% difference. People can lose a lot by not watching for this.