What cheeses me off

[serfty]

Direct Currency Conversion - you have to be alert.

Today I was paying for a hotel booking MYR998 using my 28º and the pinpad was handed to me to enter my PIN - I saw on the screen AUD399.

Handed back and said I wanted to pay in MYR, this was done and the transaction completed. I have checked my account and the authorisation is AUD347.

$52! That's spot on 15% - really taking the p!55

Mastercard Currency Converter | Currency Exchange Rate Calculator

Mastercard currency converter tool calculates foreign exchange rates for all the major currencies worldwide to enable cross-border purchases and ATM transactions.

www.mastercard.us

 

[Pushka]

Direct Currency Conversion - you have to be alert.

Today I was paying for a hotel booking MYR998 using my 28º and the pinpad was handed to me to enter my PIN - I saw on the screen AUD399.

Handed back and said I wanted to pay in MYR, this was done and the transaction completed. I have checked my account and the authorisation is AUD347.

$52! That's 15% - really taking the p!55

That's a great example to demonstrate how important it is. Usually you don't see both conversion amounts.

 

[serfty]

That's a great example to demonstrate how important it is. Usually you don't see both conversion amounts.

Had to activate a Malaysian Flag Icon on the touch screen before I could see the expected MYR amount.

 

[latawiec]

Direct Currency Conversion - you have to be alert.

Today I was paying for a hotel booking MYR998 using my 28º and the pinpad was handed to me to enter my PIN - I saw on the screen AUD399.

Handed back and said I wanted to pay in MYR, this was done and the transaction completed. I have checked my account and the authorisation is AUD347.

$52! That's 15% - really taking the p!55

To my knowledge most of hotels have very unattractive currency conversion. Therefore, preferable option is to pay with local currency if your bank is not charging you with an extra conversion charge to to your CC or DC.

 

[Flashback]

To my knowledge most of hotels have very unattractive currency conversion. Therefore, preferable option is to pay with local currency if your bank is not charging you with an extra conversion charge to to your CC or DC.

Even if they are, I've never seen a bank charge more than 3% so it's always going to be less than what DCC offers.

 

[serfty]

Even if they are, I've never seen a bank charge more than 3% so it's always going to be less than what DCC offers.

Yes, paying with an Qantas Business Amex for example would have earned 450 QBR points at a cost of about $10 ($360). If I'd missed the $399 and paid that, the earn would have been 516 points at a cost of $12 ($411).

 

[dajop]

Yes, paying with an Qantas Business Amex for example would have earned 450 QBR points at a cost of about $10 ($360). If I'd missed the $399 and paid that, the earn would have been 516 points at a cost of $12 ($411).

Or the other way of looking at it, if you didn't have the option of the 28 degrees card, you would have earnt an extra 56 QBR points at a cost of $51 if you hadn't noticed the $399!

For the Singapore based cards I have .. 2 Krisflyer miles/ SGD for foreign currency spend vs 1.2 for local currency spend, so DCC's a double whammy, not only would you pay the ridiculous DCC markup + 1% fee for local currency processed overseas, you would also miss out on the foreign currency earn rate, so miss out on 0.8 miles/SGD. I monitor this very closely when spending overseas.

 

[SYD]

Even if they are, I've never seen a bank charge more than 3% so it's always going to be less than what DCC offers.

As an aside, I just received noticed that NAB are increasing their International tx fee to 3.5%…(still cheaper than DCC). But once one bank moves, the rest follow…

The former Citi debit card and Platinum DC remain fee free. No mention of the NAB rewards card that’s supposedly gone fee free?

 

[MARTINE]

Speaking in general terms - and strictly apolitical - but peace protesters hurling rocks at mounted police and attacking people and property

 

[RooFlyer]

As an aside, I just received noticed that NAB are increasing their International tx fee to 3.5%…(still cheaper than DCC). But once one bank moves, the rest follow…

Not across the board, I hope. They only recently reduced the international fees to zero for cards such as the signature rewards ( Velocity-converting) card.

 

[Pushka]

Speaking in general terms - and strictly apolitical - but peace protesters hurling rocks at mounted police and attacking people and property

It is disgraceful. I can't even look. I think they've removed the horses. Peace? Sure.

Husband and I have taken part in a Peace demonstration and we were in our forties. Our sons were somewhat shocked but we felt strongly about the cause. To try to make the point that Australia should not (well, I won't say as I want to keep it apolitical) We were joined by sons teachers who first looked worried that parents had seen them protesting. It was so peaceful and as we entered the final terrace towards Parliament House all the church bells started pealing. But It did no good.

 

[SYD]

Not across the board, I hope. They only recently reduced the international fees to zero for cards such as the signature rewards ( Velocity-converting) card.

Yes, that’s what mentioned - at least for the rebadged Citi DC and Existing Platinum DC. I didn’t see the NAB Rewards card mentioned.

Is that a direct VFF earn card or convert from NAB Rewards? My NAB QF VISA Signature CC charges 3% Int tx fee (soon to be 3.5%).

 

[RooFlyer]

Is that a direct VFF earn card or convert from NAB Rewards? My NAB QF VISA Signature CC charges 3% Int tx fee (soon to be 3.5%).

Mine is NAB rewards signature, I think (I don’t really follow all the branding) but it earns NAB rewards points that are convertible to Velocity. When they withdrew international fees, it was noticeable that their Qantas earning card was excluded.

A great move by NAB - now I just use my regular credit card overseas, earn points and carry on. i’ve now exactly reversed my credit card use Overseas. The 28° card is my backup and my NAB card is my primary.

 

[SYD]

Mine is NAB rewards signature, I think (I don’t really follow all the branding) but it earns NAB rewards points that are convertible to Velocity. When they withdrew international fees, it was noticeable that their Qantas earning card was excluded.

A great move by NAB - now I just use my regular credit card overseas, earn points and carry on. i’ve now exactly reversed my credit card use Overseas. The 28° card is my backup and my NAB card is my primary.

Yes, I’m going to investigate getting one as a 28° replacement.

I just double checked and NAB don’t have a direct earn VA card (1:1) as far as I can tell.

 

[Flyfrequently]

Tightly wrapped soaps in hotels.

Wow, you get soap @JessicaTam ?!

 

[TheRealTMA]

Even if they are, I've never seen a bank charge more than 3% so it's always going to be less than what DCC offers.

Remember that with MasterCard the DCC fees are split with the merchant so it's very lucrative for the hotel/ restaurant / merchant. Hence most will try the tourist rip off all the time.

 

[SYD]

Remember that with MasterCard the DCC fees are split with the merchant so it's very lucrative for the hotel/ restaurant / merchant. Hence most will try the tourist rip off all the time.

DCC was popping up 99% of the time in Spain on a recent trip but rarely in the UK and I don’t recall seeing it in the Netherlands* or Portugal(?) using 28° MC. I wonder if there’s some varying rules out there?

*a few ATMs offered the “connivence” of charging in AUD in top of a €4 ATM fee…. Pass on both counts.

 

[Cloud9]

GAH! GAAAAAAAH! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Apologies, but I need to vent.
I've been working on a fresh integration with PayPal for a new platform I'm developing.
And the swines have only gone and deprecated the SDKs that - once upon a time - were pretty handy in putting a flow together.

Now, it's all just RESTful API doco. And that's freaking incomplete as all hell. When I have to rely on JetBrains A.I. Assist 10x more than I do on a published set of doco, coupled with having to carve and then recarve models to map to what they freaking *need*, not what they ask for... I have better things to do with my day(S!) than trying to second guess a bunch of muppets who can't even do the decent and use Swagger (or OpenAPI or whatever they're calling it this week) to generate meaningful API documentation for their users.

But, of course, they still maintain a Javascript SDK for the cowboys in the wild west... Of course they do. No doubt to go with this week's latest fad framework that doesn't bloody work properly at any kind of scale (that was a whole different world of pain trying to switch palettes out quickly on a reactive page with a new tool I wanted to introduce for users... Thank you Vue 3... Thank you very flipping much).

Time to crack open some bottles of that flipping Martin's that was going dirt cheap a couple of months ago.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

I'm going to go drink some red and rethink my life.

 

[MARTINE]

GAH! GAAAAAAAH! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Apologies, but I need to vent.
I've been working on a fresh integration with PayPal for a new platform I'm developing.
And the swines have only gone and deprecated the SDKs that - once upon a time - were pretty handy in putting a flow together.

Now, it's all just RESTful API doco. And that's freaking incomplete as all hell. When I have to rely on JetBrains A.I. Assist 10x more than I do on a published set of doco, coupled with having to carve and then recarve models to map to what they freaking *need*, not what they ask for... I have better things to do with my day(S!) than trying to second guess a bunch of muppets who can't even do the decent and use Swagger (or OpenAPI or whatever they're calling it this week) to generate meaningful API documentation for their users.

But, of course, they still maintain a Javascript SDK for the cowboys in the wild west... Of course they do. No doubt to go with this week's latest fad framework that doesn't bloody work properly at any kind of scale (that was a whole different world of pain trying to switch palettes out quickly on a reactive page with a new tool I wanted to introduce for users... Thank you Vue 3... Thank you very flipping much).

Time to crack open some bottles of that flipping Martin's that was going dirt cheap a couple of months ago.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

I'm going to go drink some red and rethink my life.

Did not understand a word but good luck!

 

[Flashback]

WCMO is having to claim missing miles. WCMO is also when you have 2 BP's and the first leg credits but the 2nd doesn't. Same carrier, same program, same booking class. So why does 1 credit, but not the other?

UA - rubbish to deal with.
AA - rubbish to deal with.
TK - sometimes good, sometimes rubbish. When rubbish, it just goes into a black hole.

I'm chasing up on them as it's worth about 30k miles, but boy what a pain. Customer service, useless, they close the case as resolve and just direct you back to the mileage claim page ....... which doesn't work for the partner airline, which was made clear in the ticket raised.