Italy - ATMs in Rome
 

So, I am hoping I can help others learn from my mistake. I took out 100 euro on my first day at a UniCredit ATM and it was 3.75 fee. I took out 200 euro at an independent ATM and it charged me a 13% foreign transaction surcharge. so it cost me $228.23. Don't make the same mistake I did!

Unicredit is now charging a fee? Or was that your bank?

i assume it was unicredit because I banknwith a credit union and there’s no fees for using ATMs.

i'd check, they may have charged a foreign atm fee

If it was Unicredit they should have warned you before completing the transaction. Was the fee in € or $

If the percentage appears on the receipt, I suspect that it is the Italian bank that imposed the fee. Hee's my experience in Prague:

I refuse to use free standing ATMs in the belief that they charge high fees for the withdrawal of cash even when asking for a receipt in the local currency. Our first withdrawal was with a Unicredit Bank which, they told us after we used their ATM, is not a bank but an investment firm and their ATM charged us 5% for the transaction. The Komercni Banka gives cash withdrawals with no fee, at least when the ATM attached to the bank building. When we left Prague we had requested at the hotel a cab that accepts credit cards. It was 7 a.m. when we left, and the cab did not accept credit cards. He stopped at a bank on the way out, a distance from the center of town, at an ATM , and this one charged us a whopping 18% fee on the withdrawal; the bank’s name is Česká spořitelna.

That last withdrawal was not a DCC and the receipt was in local currency. And this was my experience in Charles de Gaulle airport:

The Euronet ATM machines charged me 13% to give me a receipt in dollars; I still get charged a 1% transaction fee by VISA. So we paid $364 instead of $321 (that day’s averaged rate). The statement printed on the receipt says that I chose that option as if another option were available; but my impression is that the only other option was to cancel the transaction.

I suspect that the OP was subject to the DCC, either because he did not know any better or, like me in CDG, because there was no obvious alternative.

they did. I wasn’t complaining about the fee. Just sharing info for others about my mistake using the standalone ATM (I was in a pinch).

13% was for the receipt to be printed in dollars? That’s so odd. What’s DCC stand for?

This: https://www.investopedia.com/dynamic...c-term-4769305

found my receipt:

Amount Withdrawn: 200 euro
Transaction fee: 3,95 euro
Exchange Rate: 1 USD = 0.8936 Euro
Markup: 13.98%

so it was simply marked "Markup" and was 13.98%. Moral of the story - go to a regular bank ATM. this was an ATM at a "tourista" center in Piazza Navona.

That was a DCC (dynamic currency conversion) charge. If not, you wouldn't see the dollar value of the transaction. You should not accept any offer to have a purchase or a withdrawal priced in dollars. Make sure everything is priced in euros. That way your credit card company does the conversion, at a much lower rate.

Still, you're correct in saying that you should use ATMs associated with a bank. My Italian bank offers DCC (which I refuse), but it shows me the conversion rate, which is not unreasonable.

No it's just if they are it's a fairly recent change. End of August they weren't. Unless I went to BNL without realizing it -(

A big shout out and thank you to Traveler Nick for your very helpful info before my recent trip to Italy. We needed euros before leaving FCO airport in Rome. You warned me to use Unicredit not Bankomat. Well, there were Bankomats every 50 feet inside the airport, but not a Unicredit in sight. My husband thought I was nuts but I was determined not to pay a fee. We ended up getting 200 euros from a Bankomat just to get us going (what's $13 among "friends" right?). After that we found that you were right, there are less and less ATM's in Italy, apparently an attempt to get everyone to convert away from cash. So we sought out banks with ATM in the lobby. But the thing is, most vendors much preferred cash, especially the gas pumps, toll booths, and parking stations (we cured that with downloading the parkhere app, I highly recommend). We finally figured out that the tap card with pin was the best way to use CC. (Our cc was tap but no pin, but our debit card was both).

In case you're wondering, the reason we needed euros was because our rental home required "500 euros cash deposit, to be returned on day of departure". Which I discovered is apparently contrary to a new Italian law requiring "vendors" to offer credit transactions. Funny how the law is one thing, but "custom" is another. We even used a rental agency (there were other problems with the rental property grrr), who is still insisting that this law does not apply to security deposits...

The Unicredit is hidden by the work going on in T3. If you know where it is you can find it but if you're looking it's challenging. No idea when they'll finally finish the work.

so if i declined it, they would have still given me my cash bu:)t just not display the amount in USD? or would it have declined the transaction altogether? i needed cash, but I didn't really understand why it was charging me the fee. it didn't pose it as a DCC - it just said it was a foreign transaction surcharge. argggggg. well - at least the mistake wasn't too insanely expensive. what's crazy is the Exchange rate says 1 USD = 0.8936 Eur. so $228.23 got me 200euro. oy. not letting that happen again.

ahhhhhh - here it is. this is the exact sequence of screens i saw. i could have declined it! doh!

https://europeforvisitors.com/venice...e%20conversion.

Unicredit has been imposing an ATM fee to its own customers for years, I am not surprised they act as as***les also with tourists.
There is an ATM outside every Post Office, it's often cheaper than many Banks and they are affiliated with Visa and Mastercard.

Re some stuff written above:

Unicredit is a Bank like all the others. Quite obviously, if they were not a Bank the EU's competition watchdog wouldn't let them promote themselves as such. The Name Unicredit comes from the merging of two banks.

There were 40.396 Bancomat in Italy in 2021 whereas they were 43.807 in 2012. For now, I doubt anyone on the tourists' path could notice such a small difference that happened all over the country in 10 years. They are closing bank subsidiaries in rural Italy, and the problem is getting worse and worse for old people not used to Internet Banking.

And they are still right whereas you are still wrong... First because the limit to use cash is 2,000 Euro up to December 31st, then it will be 1,000; second because you can't impose a fee (aka a cost for the vendor) by law on a deposit.

All gas pumps and tolls take plastic, the fact that your card did not work does not mean they prefer cash.