Eurostar Question

Who is your bank, and exactly what is the card and terms? That fee is EXACTLY 3% -which sure looks like a standard bank fee of 3% for a foreign transaction, and there are banks that impose this on debit cards. I agree that this fee did not come from Eurostar, if it did it would have been $7.

eurostar.com allows you to buy tickets in dollars, pounds or euros

http://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/contact-us/frequently-asked-questions/payment/how-can-i-pay-in-a-different-currency

If you bought the tickets in dollars I too am puzzled why there should be a foreign transaction fee. Did you buy in pounds or euros which were then converted by your bank?

A card used abroad will encounter the currency conversion fee whether charged in dollars or local currency. - assuming that this is a normal charge associated with the card. Some cards don't charge that fee.

In these days of online purchases where is "abroad"?

If the US site was used to buy tickets in dollars then that's not abroad.

If the UK site was used to buy tickets in pounds, which are then converted to dollars by the OP's bank, then that's abroad.

Thank you for your responses. I used eurostar.com and clicked on US. The website gave me a quote in USD, so I assumed there was no transaction fee from my bank. The bank rep gave us faulty information, telling us that the fee was from Eurostar. I should have used a different card, but live and learn!

ramblin' on, to answer your question, it depends on where the website does its banking.
It was an option you didn't list: a UK web site used to buy tickets in US dollars.

The website owner (Eurostar) charged their credit card "Acquiring bank" (in the UK) in USD, who charged Visa/Master Card/whoever who charged Gerri's bank.
Gerri's bank then said "this is coming in from abroad, we can sting them with a foreign transaction fee". The currency is irrelevant. If you had paid in pounds or Euros, Visa etc. would have converted to USD, and Gerri's bank would still have stung him.with a "foreign transaction fee"

Moto: In this world of global capitalism, the banks will always find a a way to charge you.

Chris F
"it depends on where the website does its banking" - I agree, though eurostar doesn't say where it does its banking.

On the UK version of the site, UK customers are charged in pounds, which then show as pounds on UK bank statements and of course there's no "foreign" transaction fee. I expect this is the same for French customers who buy tickets in euros via the French site and pay no foreign transaction fee because the euro is the "home" currency of the French site

So my question is, are US customers who use the US site, and who buy in dollars (supposedly the home currency of the US site), being hit with a "foreign" transaction fee by their bank? If so, that to me seems wrong because the purchase was made in $

I understand if Canadians who use the US site are charged a fee, but I don't understand why US customers are being charged

ramblin' on, you wrote "So my question is, are US customers who use the US site"
But, there is no "US site". There is only one site, which could be hosted on the UK or in France, but is unlikely to hosted anywhere else.
This site (and many others) is just asking you which currency you want to pay in, it is not re-directing you to a new site. Where they bank is where they are registered as a company, which for Eurostar is both UK and France.
Just because you are charged in USD doesn't mean the transaction is being posted directly to a US bank, so it is a "foreign transaction".

This is also true for airlines and other companies. Easyjet for example only has one site, but it is multi-lingual and you can choose one of many languages and pay in many currencies, but it is still one website.
I have in the past bought from dell.ch, paid in Swiss Franks, deliver to Switzerland and my credit card was charged Swiss Franks in Ireland, because that is where Dell Europe HQ is.

In the end, if a bank can get away with a charge for something, they will charge for it.

Yes, your bank did impose the fee. If they continue to claim they did not, it is time to change banks. Many banks and especially credit unions do not charge the international fees on transactions any more.

It does not matter what the currency was the transaction occurred in, only the country where the charge is made. This was changed in the Visa and Master Card rules a few years ago to allow banks to charge the fee for these types of transactions. As others have stated, Eurostar does NOT have a US based site so the transaction happened outside the US for fee purposes even though they do allow the charge in US Dollars. (An interesting side effect to this is Puerto Rico is NOT considered part of the US for credit and debit transactions so you can get stuck with the foreign exchange fee when you buy something there too even though the only option to pay is US dollars and US citizens can go there without a passport!)

Hi Gerri, a lot of ATM cards and credit cards charge a foreign transaction fee, that's what happened when you bought your Eurostar tickets.