MGB Are we not talkling about two different fees? The 1% levied by both Visa and MC are applied to all charges that go through either of those two giant credit card licensers. Some individual banks that issue either Visa or Master Cards add on 2% more, which brings the fee up to 3%. <BR><BR>The 1% is totally a Visa or MC show.<BR>As far as I know, they have always charged it, but one never knew what the basis was for the charge.<BR>In fact, one not only did not know but could not find out because neither outfit would ever reveal that information. I know; I tried and was told to shut up and go away.<BR>

Of course there's also the famous case where some bozo was hit by a car while talking on a public phone and sued the phone company for having the audacity to put the phone booth at an intersection. And some jury bought that and some lawyer collected a lot of money. Oh my...American tort law.

First, let me say that I do not condone Visa and MC not acknowledging (if that was the case) a fee on currency exchanges. But - did anyone truly believe that such exchanges were free.<BR>Who was expected to pay for the ubiquitous ATMs, the electronic systems that enable us to access our funds anywhere in the world at any time of day and bear the risk of currency fluctuations?<BR><BR>Any time I see a huge award I wonder how much it will cost me. <BR><BR>When I first went to Europe in 1958, you took traveler's checks which had a fee to buy and an additional fee to convert to the local currency. The combined fees were probably 5%. If you look at the money changers today I don't think it is much different. Were I the CEO of Visa or MC I'd simply pay the fine and announce that my fees going forward would be 2% and I'd still be cheaper than any other money converter.

Frankly, I am less upset about the MC/Visa charges (which we all knew about, and all exchanges cost something) than the hidden Citibank, etc., 2% add-on for nothing. They are covered, I supposed, because somewhere in their mighty fine print that charge is listed. You won't find it on your bill, though!

FYI, I just read an article in the S.F. legal paper about this -- total amounts collected since 1996 by these undisclosed charges are slightly in excess of $1 billion. Expectation is that they'll end up paying out over $800 million in the end. Not a small amount.

Note once again that both the Mastercard and Visa spokespeople I quoted in a post above whined that since even the judge agreed their conversion rates were &quot;the best possible&quot; or &quot;favorable&quot; that the judge cannot, therefore, say they deceived consumers by not disclosing them.<BR><BR>If the rates are indeed &quot;the best possible&quot; then why on earth wouldn't Visa &amp; Mastercard not only disclose them, but promote them as a competitive advantage?

Opinion was 125 pages long -- didn't take that much to say how wonderful VISA and Mastercard were -- said concelment of charges was intentional and injurious to consumers and competition. I agree it sounds like they were merely stupid.