tobiashenry

I've a fully flexible and refundable ticket. Due to the recent plummeting Turkish currency, Is there any way I can take advantage of the inexpensive turkish lira? if I re-book my flight with Turkish lira, does it mean my card will charge on Turkish lira?

Often1

If you have a GBP or EUR CC and a charge is made in a foreign currency, it will be converted at some point into the currency in which you pay. Thus, you can't very effectively engage in currency arbitrage through credit cards.

There are rare occasions when a carrier screws things up and fails to properly convert its ticket prices against a vast currency change. But, those typically last for a few hours and at best benefit a very few customers and at worst are cancelled as errors.

flyerby

tobiashenry

Just to report back, I managed to cancel the ticket in NOK and rebuy the same ticket in TRY. I thought I would have saved around 130+ USD. But in the end only saving 50 USD +, with bank charges, and poor rate with visa.

nacho

I think the only way you can really benefit that is to actually go to Turkey, bring enough cash to change to TRL and use cash to buy tickets.

This happened in Iceland a couple of years ago, and people ran to raid high end handbags but then they discovered their CC robbed them with crazy bank fee and at the end of the day they saved very little.

IAN-UK

I'm told this was happening in Nisantasi shops not smart enough to denominate goods in EUR

efe83

Just read that some guy named Tyler Wayne on FB claims to have saved 300$ on LAX-IST ticket by buying it on the Turkish site using a VPN. I couldn't do it for my location.

tobiashenry

I guess it might make sense on J. Not sure whether he got a card with less foregin transaction fee and rate. I dont think it's possible to get the currency exchange rate that cited on Google.

MixalisK.

Did u try a free vpn service? Most of them are rubbish, try Avast phantom, that works for me in most cases.
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efe83

I also asked friends in Turkey to search for me locally but they ended up seeing the same prices that I had, so I suspect TK must have hiked fares to match the currency. Maybe there was a short window where such savings were possible, not sure (?)

BurekTheGreat

OFF-TOPIC: Take a look at Revolut. I get much better FX rates and no fees when using Revolut card instead my traditional credit/debit card.

starflyergold

I'm fairly certain that TK prizes airfares in USD and then converts them into local currency. A number of years ago the changed their accounting to USD too.

nacho

Before USD, EUR was TK's currency and then they changed to USD when EUR started going down in value.

hfly

As I posted on another thread, Turkey is not Egypt or Thailand where international tickets were priced in local currency. With the exception of Northern Cyprus, all tickets in Turkey have been priced in $ or EUR for at least 36 years, so other than possibly buying a ticket at the exact correct time in relation to a drop, and in Turkey, there was no cost saving to be had. Domestic tickets are another thing as there were/are some great deals to be had as those ARE denominated in TL, but have been raising fast..

Actually IAN, those shops that you mention were purposely NOT indexing their prices right away, whether it was a FIFO thing or another exercise, they made the conscious decision to move product, as they know that if and when it gets worse they are possibly not going to have much custom for some time to come.

The silliest thing I read was in the UK people emptying out Bureau's of TL, so they could "lock in" lower rates, when everyone knows that such Bureau's are the worst possible deal one can get!

ElJudioErrante

No , not silliest thing because whenever Lira falls , outside Turkey the demand for Lira is very high (because Turkey is good destination for hols/shopping) so Lira then outside Turkey sells for a premium.So even though the UK bureaux are expensive , they still sell their lira .Inside Turkey right now as the exchange rate has not settled so there is at present a higher than normal margin between buy and sell rates.So one may not get the normal good deal ie nearer to spot rate in Turkey as one would normally get.