I notice more and more in Ireland (the home of DCC) you are asked if you prefer the charge in euros or dollars. Perhaps something is getting through to vendors. I always tell the person taking my card what I want before I hand it over. I often overhear other tourists tell them to charge in dollars. I guess they don't know about DCC or this forum!

I think you're picking nits.

<b><i>Visa requires that you are provided a meaningful choice at the point of sale.</i></b>

The requirement is that local currency be <u>offered</u>. &quot;Denied&quot; and &quot;refused&quot; means that it wasn't.

Credit card companies are notorious for picking nits. I'd rather pick a few myself to avoid the possibility of their picking them later!
Sure, it's a minor point, but how much harder is to write &quot;denied&quot; than &quot;offered&quot; which could suggest that they simply never mentioned the possibility of doing it otherwise, nor did you?

Okay - from the language of the Visa site: how about &quot;Meaningful choice not provided?&quot;

Cheez.

As pointed out above - it's to the card issuer's benefit to undo the dollar charge and do the conversion themselves. They make more money doing that.

Congratulations. You have just won the &quot;nit-picking&quot; contest.

Perhaps there is another way to look at this DCC &quot;problem.&quot; It seems that DCC itself is not an issue but, rather, it is the lack of choice by some merchants which is offensive. However, where a merchant does offer a choice of paying for a transaction in a foreign currency or the customer's own currency, aren't we all better off? Ever since this DCC service came about, I've noticed some Visa &amp; MasterCard providers being more aggressive in promoting their currency conversion practices - in some cases, like Capital One, not charging any fees at all.

Contrast this with those cards, such as American Express, which offer no choice as to the method of converting foreign transactions. I noticed a recent posting on Fodor's by Katie Hamlin, applauding American Express, &quot;which charges a flat 2% fee, [and] deserves special mention for its refusal to allow merchants to tack on additional fees at the point of sale, namely the Dynamic Currency Conversion fee (DCC).&quot; I thought this an interesting statement -- as anyone who has recently checked their fineprint from Amex knows, effective April 10, 2007, American Express has increased the amount it adds to foreign currency transactions from 2% to 2.5%. One wonders why they stopped there? So much for customer choice!

Visa (and MasterCard) deserves the credit for promoting competition between the merchant and my bank for my dollars (Euros, Yen, whatever).... Sure, some merchants still haven't gotten the message but, as the contributors to this forum eloquently point out, Visa permits the ability to challenge the transaction if the merchant does not offer a choice of currencies. I, for one, prefer the ability to make the choice, but do appreciate everyone's suggestions.

...and knowing full well that 100% of the time you do far worse allowing a merchant to pull this dcc scam on you, why should any choice be permitted?

Now if the merchants used the interbank rate then I would have no problem with it.

The choice should be permitted because some people (believe it or not) don't know how much the transaction is costing them in dollars unless the merchant's terminal does the conversion. This is, in fact, a major selling point presented by the DCC scam artists.

I would venture that 99% of the time this is done out of ignorance of the additional DCC fees.

I said this once before and no one believed me, but here it goes again. And please realize, I'm NOT advocating DCC, just telling about a single isolated event.

Several years ago in London we ate at Rock and Sole Plaice, a fish and chips restaurant. When I went to pay with my Citibank, the waiter said he'd do it in US dollars. I protested and said I knew all about DCC -etc. But he insisted that because they are an American owned company and the credit card charge would go directly to their US bank, that didn't apply to me. I argued some more. Finally I just gave up as it was only for about 20 pounds anyway -- how much could it cost?

Well guess what. When that charge came through on my statement, it was indeed at the exact amount of dollars charged -- and yes the conversion they did at the restaurant that day was the normal exhange rate. And here's the best part. Since it was indeed deposited into their US bank, it did not count as a foreign charge and Citibank did not add the usual 3% to it.

So here is one example --a very unusual one, I'm sure -- where what appeared to be DCC actually saved me money. Although I suppose you really can't call it Dynamic currency conversion, because it really wasn't converting anything except the initial charge was done there at current rates. I have been unable to confirm that the place is US owned, but I do know that it sure worked somehow as the charge showed up on my statement the same as if it were done in the US.

...of course the big problem are the lies the clerks are taught to tell to the customers:

1. You do better with dcc as there are no fees the credit card companies charge.

2. The amount listed is just an approximation.

3. I have no control over the terminal; it's done automatically.

4. It's a law here that all credit card transactions be done in the currency of the credit card.

5. No speak English.

NeoPatrick,

I had the oppostie experience. A car rental agency, presumably an American subsidiary, charged me 7.5% using DCC in Portugal. I think that it is safer to decline DCC.

Wow. What timing. I just went online and looked at my Citibank statement. I see that the company in Amsterdam that was to charge me 475 euro for a deposit, came through as $644.77. The charge posted on 3/09 when the XE rate shows 1.31169, which would be $ 623.05. I called Citibank to see how many euros were charged and they don't seem to have that record, only the dollar amount. So I'm suspecting that the agency decided to charge me in dollars at a rate of 1.36. I have emailed them to ask how I was charged. Meanwhile the guy at Citibank was no help at all -- he didn't have a clue what Dynamic Currency Conversion is or why that would make a difference, nor how I could protest it.
And of course, I realize that Citibank will still be adding a total of 3% more onto this since it was a foreign transaction -- even if it was done in dollars.

We first encountered this scam in London in July '04.
I refused the DCC and told them if they didn't charge in GBPs, I was leaving and they should call the police.
I made such a fuss, they rapidly obliged.
M

Yes, but now I'm wondering how I can make such a fuss about something done when they are there and I was here! Especially since there was no signature involved which would indicate approval and yet no opportunity to protest the charge in dollars, if that is what they have done.

I would dispute the entire charge. If the merchant doesn't have a signature or the cyber equivalent, the card issuer will charge back the invoice.

Then you can negotiate a settlement on <i>your</i> terms.

Good luck!

Get ready for this. I have heard back from the rental agency in Amsterdam (Simply Amsterdam). They assured me that they did not charge in dollars. In fact the woman told me they don't even keep track of what the exchange rate is, nor would they know how many dollars to charge. They charged my card 475 euros and put in through their terminal.

I call Citibank and they inform me that the charge came through VISA services (by the way my Citibank is a Master Card) already in the amount of $644.77. The Citibank supervisor tells me normally they can look and see how many euros were charged, what the rate was, and how many dollars it converted to, and they will also see the 1% levied by Visa. But in this case they insist there is no record of any of that -- it simply came through from Visa services in dollars and doesn't even show up as a foreign purchase.

So when I said, &quot;I'll still get 3% added since it's a foreign charge&quot;, she insists no I won't. That it didn't really come through as a foreign charge at all -- it just comes through as a charge from Visa just as it would if I had charged something in the US and it was handled through Visa. And what's really interesting is that the dollar amount is almost exactly 3% above what it would have been at the XE rate. So what's happening? Is Visa services now adding 3% before they send it on to Citibank?
I won't know for sure until I get my statement if there is an additional charge, but the rep insisted there won't be -- and she says there is none now on my account, as normally there would be for each foreign purchase.

Stranger and stranger. The bottom line is, that apparently however this happened, it's costing me no more than if it had gone through at the good rate and then Citibank added its usual 1% visa and 2% additional. But if I had a credit card that normally didn't add 2 or 3% for foreign purchases, it sounds like I still would have been billed the same amount.

Sounds like you've been DCC'd, and the person you talked to at Simply Amsterdam doesn't know about it. That's why Citibank saw the charge come through in USD.

Maybe.

Possibly.

Although I was under the impression that with normal DCC, the charge still comes through as a charge in a foreign country and the credit card company then adds a percent if that is their policy. How do you explain that in this case apparently that isn't happening. It really seems like the entire currency conversion thing was done not by the &quot;merchant&quot; but by Visa services in the handling of it.

And by the way, all my correspondance with Simply Amsterdam has been with the same person (is Jan a man's name?) -- whom I take to be the owner/agent/worker/secretary -- in other words, a one person operation. So it hardly seems likely that they are doing a DCC without being aware of it. I have no reason not to believe her/him when they say they never converted it to dollars.

Patrick - I think I am understanding this but why do you think that the dollar amount is not just simply the currency conversion rate of 3% already added? When I get my Visa (admittedly Canadian) I only see two amounts - the amount in foreign currency and the amount plus the bank and Visa charge - totalled in Canadian dollars.

Because that's normally what I see too, but in this case there is NO foreign amount -- not even in view to Citibank. There is only dollars, and it is already 3% higher than the amount it should be by the daily exchange rate.
What I'm really saying is, it looks like Visa services added the 3% before it even got to Citibank -- and when they did it, they changed it as if it were a regular charge, not a foreign one.

Could this be a &quot;new&quot; charge from Visa services, not unlike the added 1% they started adding about a year ago for all ATM withdrawals they handle for banks?