The DCC saga continues.....

The DCC is alive and well.

Just about every hotel, most restaurants, and many shops give me the choice of paying in local currency or in dollars when paying by credit card. I always pay in local currency.

I've made note of some of the dollar amounts and later checked it against the bank rates. At times it was a big difference and others it was pretty close.

My current hotel says they now the Pound/Dollar exchange isn't good but they claim the Pound/Euro is pretty close.

I never pre-pay for accommodations as I have the habit of changing hotels at the last minute. But I did notice one flight and one hotel I booked last minute wanted to charge me in dollars and I had to change it to local currency.

It probably was automatically set to charge in your own currency unless you opted out. That would be something people could easily miss.

Want to mention I just booked a room in Bangor thru venere.com and it gave me the option to 'pay now in your own currency (Canadian) or pay at the hotel in the currency accepted (US$)'. There was a $3 difference. So I chose pay at the hotel in US$, figuring they would nail me with DCC. I'm also hoping they may accept Canadian at par. I'll find out Saturday!

I nearly got caught out by DCC in Paris last year. I was very surprised when the man in the shop asked if I wanted to pay in pounds (it was a British card) since the card is denominated in euros. Presumably the card handling system identifies the "nationality" of the card rather than its currency.

Interesting Ken. Thanks for the head's up. I've not pre-paid for any lodging for my next trip but went back and checked on train and intra-European plane tickets just to make sure.

I've also booked a few other hotels this year (with slightly higher rates) with the bill being paid at check-out. I'll be watching for DCC with those also.

At one hotel in Switzerland last year, I missed the fact that DCC had been selected for the transaction as the clerk had "flying fingers" and punched in the DCC option before handing the credit card terminal to me for entry of the PIN. As I didn't see a choice on the POS terminal, I assumed that the transaction was in Swiss Francs. It's an easy thing to miss, especially when one is in a hurry to get to the station so as not to miss their train.

I booked a Copenhagen hotel this past January that offered a small reduced price for pre-paid. Charge on My Capital One Visa went through in EUR and converted to USD at essentially Interbank rate.

A number of years ago I pre-paid for a London hotel in pounds multiple months before arrival. (I booked mileage air 8 or nine months in advance of the trip). The pre-paid price if I recall correctly was something half or less than half the cancel at no charge rate. It could be that some properties are willing to take discounted advance payments as a working capital financial strategy.