As you know many merchants overseas now try to get you to
process credit card charges in CAD rather than local currency. In my
experience it results in about an extra 4% in the non-competitive forex rate
from the one used by, in my case, RBC. It started for me in Spain in 2014
when the B&B I booked directly with in Barcelona processed my deposit in
CAD at greatly inflated conversion without my knowledge. Then, once in
Spain, I noticed a few times that the person handing me the CC machine had
already pressed the “transact in CAD” button before handing the machine to me
for my PIN. Anyway, it happened again earlier this year with a
B&B I booked in Sydney. And last month with a B&B in Penzance UK.
The lady running the place, a retired lawyer, never mentioned that she would be
running through my deposit in CAD at a lousy rate, so I was surprised to see
the inflated forex conversion used on my transaction report a week later
Anyway, I complained to RBC Visa and they were very
forthcoming after some back & forth. They did state that according to their terms of service,
the merchant was definitely required to ask for permission to process in CAD
instead of local currency and that if caught soon enough, they would go back to
the merchant to correct the issue to ensure a reasonable exchange rate is used.
As my transaction was all done by phone & email, they said they couldn’t do
that in this case, but that “as a customer service goodwill gesture” they would
credit me the difference between the excessive rate I had been charged and the
proper rate on another regular forex transaction that day with another B&B
in the UK. Hence the $7.40 credit. J
Now let’s see – what will Bev spend that on?
David
