stut

Same here. The NFC on my credit card gets put to good use on a daily basis!

I would agree with others on the original topic, though - if you detect DCC (by a non-local currency appearing), decline the transaction and escalate if necessary. It's nothing short of a scam in my eyes.

mandolino

Yeah, what's the problem with that? Unless you're trying to guard your privacy by using cash.

I must say I've never had anyone charge me in my home currency without asking me - I always get the option (it usually comes up on the card reader) and I always choose local. I have to review our card statements every month so I try to warn our subsidiary card holders not to fall for the "home currency" option too.

I will pay more attention next time I'm in Ireland though. Last time I was there somebody bought several rounds of drinks after midnight in Temple Bar on my card and I have NO RECOLLECTION AT ALL (apart from a headache and dry throat).

GUWonder

The worst scam aspect of this that I have almost been subjected to is usually at hotels: adjust the USD rate into local currency (or from local currency into USD terms) at some lousy exchange rate and then combining that with DCC.

stut

Same experience here. What's doubly galling about it is when your CCs still charge a conversion percentage as it's a cost incurred outside your home country (regardless of the currency).

It seems to have replaced the older scam where hotels would quote you a rate in EUR (or USD or whatever), but charge you in local currency. However, rather than the EUR value being an indication of the rate at the time of booking, they hotel would convert the EUR to local currency, using a rate in their favour, at the time of booking, and the final sum could be a good amount higher than the rate quoted.

What's also odd is that I've recently been offered DCC in my own country.

RTW1

Why is there an expectation that hotels should be charging anything but the local currency?
Excluding a short list of countries that is what the rates will be normally quoted in unless you use a site that does some kind of conversion... but the contract is in the local currency.

It's DCC that's the problem.

stut

This used to be my experience in pre-Eurozone central and eastern Europe. Not a website issue - some hotels would quote exclusively in EUR, and do the conversion from their EUR rates at payment time. Thus the local rate would vary according to the exchange rate of the day, and be loaded in the hotel's favour.

I haven't seen it for years, and agree the DCC is now the more common scam.

beergut

Virtually everything I purchase goes on my Amex no matter how small the value.

Paying by cash still has a cost for the retailer, even if it didn't I'd still use a card.

GUWonder

Accepting cash indeed does still have a cost for the seller, including (amongst other things) that of cash handling costs and loss/theft costs. Whether or not such cash-acceptance costs exceed the card-acceptance costs (of a fixed slip fee + % of transaction value) will vary based on the circumstances of the transaction.

In Sweden, many banks charge customers -- sometimes even business customers -- for cash handling. Some banks in the market even refuse to handle cash deposits from retail bank customers. The cost of cash-acceptance in such circumstances may indeed exceed the cost of accepting cards or other non-cash payment methods.

RTW1

That's before DCC was even invented :-).

stut

Is it long enough ago for me to refer to it as "back in the day" yet?

pinniped

I simply wouldn't sign the receipt. If I was in a hurry to catch a flight and they were stalling, I'd tell the manager to email me later when it was figured out. It's a dirty scam, and even if it was just a quarter I'd want to make things hard on the scammers.

I don't buy for a second that they "can't figure it out". I've had a retailer attempt to pull a DCC on me before, complete with an explanation that it's the only way they could process it. So I walked away, and lo and behold before I got too far down the street they magically figured out another process. @:-) So I think an established hotel in Ireland can too...

erik123

Just explain that your employer doesn't allow it.

Brobbel

I once had a carrental billed in ANG (Netherlands Antilles Guilders). That was in the old days, when they had to take a print of the card. When I arrived home I found out that they took USD from my card.

There is a fixed rate for conversion ANG to and from USD, which only differs for sale/transfer/buy (1.75 - 1.78 - 1.80), so when they used the transferrate nothing was wrong, but offcourse they decided to use the worst (for me) rate. Then I decided to decline this amount and the amount was returned, because I was able to show the ANG-slip.

I contacted the rental company several times, but they did not charge the ANG-amount again (or even the USD-amount with better conversion-rate, which I also offered). After about five times contacting I stopped. So at the end I had a free car-rental.

BigFlyer

There was (and I think may still be) an ATM that dispenses US$ at Schiphol. I was curious as to how I would be charged on my US$ ATM card for a withdrawal at that ATM, so I withdrew $20 as a test.

If memory serves, my ATM card was charged in Euro, so I essentially paid a round-trip conversion - the ATM converted the $$$ I was given into Euro, my bank converted the Euro charge back to $$$$.

chrisljo

Have to stay, this is the solution and in Europe shouldn't get you in trouble.

Offering to price in their guests currency is a (almost worthless) service but requiring it (directly or by making it difficult) is unfair, bad customer relations and probarly illegal.