Michael

As far as I can tell, Ryanair uses dynamic currency conversion without warning. I purchased three one-way tickets from Standsted to Oporto. I am given the price in pounds and that is what my voucher states. I checked the currency conversion on http://www.xe.com/ucc/, and there is a $3 differential. But was is especially telling is that on the same Visa statement I am billed for Air Berlin tickets to which is added the 1% Visa conversion fee as a separate item. This fee was not added to my Ryanair purchase. I did not notice that I had any choice in the matter.

Intrepid1

The merchants have absolutely nothing to do with the Visa "conversion" fee which is imposed by the credit card/issuing bank.

Looking up an exchange rate at www.xe.com while convenient, should only be used as a general guide since that "rate" is more likely the interbank rate which banks charge/give to each other when large amounts of money are being moved.

Michael

If the fee added been imposed by the credit card/issuing bank, it would have been listed separately, as they were for my Berlin Air purchase. A flag was raised because <b>no</b> fee had been imposed, as if it was a dollar purchase.

Next month I'll report on a Ryanair purchase in euros to see if the same thing happens.

grsing

Ryanair does do dynamic conversion; there is a link at some point along the process that will tell you how much you'll be charged in whatever currency you're paying in, and yes, it is a fairly crappy exchange rate. Plus their extra fee for credit card transactions; they may be cheap, but between the taxes, the fees, and the exchange rate, it certainly doesn't hurt to shop around.

Intrepid1

OK..let me get this straight..you are saying in your original post you talk about an &quot;added&quot; 1% conversion fee &quot;as a separate item.&quot; And that &quot;this fee was not added to my Ryanair purchase.&quot;

Was the Ryanair charge posted in dollars or was there a currency conversion factor added or the term &quot;foreign currency&quot; in that SAME entry? If there is, then there was no DCC.

Michael

Intrepid,

I receive a bill from my Credit Union Visa card that is exclusively in dollars, with no mention of a foreign currency. But I have vouchers where prices are stated either in euros or pounds. For the Berlin Air ticket purchases, the credit union shows as a separate line item a 1% conversion fee. For the Ryanair tickets, there is no separate line item for the conversion fee, and such a line item would not appear in dollar transactions either.

Christina

Well, I don't know what Ryanair does, but I do know that some credit cards will only show you the amount in dollars, even though it was originally in a foreign currency and there was no DCC. My Capitol One Mastercard does that, and it really annoys me because I have to go back to my original receipts to see what the amount was in euro and then compare it to their USD amount to make sure my bill is correct. There is no DCC involved in that, it is just the way that credit card company does it -- they only post amounts in USD on my bill.

Now my Visa puts both down, the charge in the foreign currency and then on the right side, the USD conversion, and then does list the one pct fee somewhere else.