Many of us already know that we should always pay in the local currency rather than become a victim of dynamic currency conversion by paying a GBP amount determined by the merchant.
Last month my girlfriend paid a restaurant bill of EUR 26.50 with her Revolut card in Spain. AFTER she had authorised EUR 26.50 to be charged to her card and handed the card terminal back to the waiter, a message appeared on the terminal asking whether she instead wished to pay GBP 23.61 (which was 3.3% more). As the waiter was holding the card terminal, she clearly told the waiter ânoâ twice and that she wished to pay in EUR, given that she knew that this dynamic currency conversion is a scam used by many merchants, particularly in Spain, which serves only to generate additional revenue for the merchant. The waiter ignored her instruction and disingenuously pressed âyesâ, causing her card to be charged GBP 23.61 without her authorisation. Although the amount was small, the principle of Spanish merchants scamming non-Eurozone tourists by 3.3% is not one that she wished to support. Therefore she insisted that the merchant refund the unauthorised transaction. The restaurant manager eventually refunded GBP 23.61 to her Revolut card (which took a couple of days to appear on her Revolut account). She paid the EUR 26.50 again, this time correctly.
It is particularly worrying that Spanish card terminals allow the merchant to change the currency and amount AFTER authorisation; the currency amount authorised by the cardholder should always be final. Be warned!
Thank you for sharing your experience.
In these cases, if the merchant charges unauthorised transaction, and of course he refuses to refund, we can raise a chargeback to recoup any difference.
Just posted another example of this scam in a thread under the âIdeasâ section. My tip is when presented with one of those portable card terminals is to keep hold of it after entering the PIN when it should display something like âReturn Card Terminal to Merchantâ press enter and then the currency selection option should appear, select EUR ( or local currency) and wait until it prints the receipt. I proved this by putting through a small value transaction in response to a merchant telling me that the currency selection was out of their control, WRONG, it is very much within their control.
It seems that the â get out of jailâ card for DCC scammers is the part of the receipt that reads something like
âYou have chosen to be billed in your home currency which is final and there is no recourse to Your card issuer against the exchange rate usedâ
Which basically implies that you willingly chose to be charged in GBP and you are happy to allow yourself to ripped off with whatever exchange rate the DCC provider wishes to use.
The sooner Visa & MasterCard finally wake up to the fact that DCC is open to abuse and against the interests of the consumer, the better.
I am in a similar situation to the OP, I have contacted the Revolut support team, but the support person told me that they cannot do anything and that I should contact VISA instead
Is there anyone in Revolut I should contact about it before raising it higher?
A kind of similar issue occured to me a couple of months ago. In my case, I made sure that I had enough PLN in my account to pay the hotel. The hotel charged me in PLN (as per my request; the POS showed PLN) yet the transaction was somehow converted to GBP and then back to PLN (causing double exchange fees) that resulted in a roughly extra 80-100GBP charged to my account.
At the time, neither the hotel nor Revolut support knew how to sort the issue. Would you statement âwe can raise a chargeback to recoup any differenceâ apply in this case? I still have all the original receipts and copies of communication with Revout it they can be of help.
