Tesco Lotus - Credit Card Currency Conversion

[jbaldwin]

Tesco Lotus has recently introduced Dynamic Current Conversion at it South Pattaya Branch. Basicly this gives customers the option of having their bill converted in the card's currency at point of sale but at a very poor exchange rate. However, it seems that they have not property trained there staff how to use the system.

I am out of pocket because of their staff incompetance - Only a very small amount - but with nothing better to do with my time why not spend a couple hours trying to recover it. The lateest attempted is a post on Tesco's UK facebook page which i reproduce below. This will all be too familiar to anyone used to dealing with Thai "customer services"

This is about your ref TES4307634NI, where you your unable to supply a direct e-mail for the managing director for Tesco Lotus in Thailand. I have therefore had to deal raise the problem my bank. I thought theat that members of your UK management that are responsible for your asia businesses might wish to see the message I sent to my bank so it is shown below

"On 7 October I made a purchase at a Tesco Lotus store (this is the Thai subsidary of Tesco). Without asking I was charged in GBP. I asked for the transaction to be cancelled but instead a was given a credit in Thai baht. I made clear that this was not what I wanted but I was told that they could not cancel the original transaction because the banks were closed (it was about 6.00pm local time). After foreign exchange charges, my account was debited by GBP24.03 but I was only refunded GBP22.86 so I need to recover another GBP1.17. I should add that I did not sign the slip for the original transaction the the retailer was fully aware that I did not authorise it. I spent 30 minute in the store and another 25 minutes on the telephone later to try to get the retailer to deal with the issue but I was told "we cannot do anything, the bank must solve" How should I recover the GBP1.17. As I never authorised the original transaction do I need to make a claim under Nationwide's fraud guarantee?"

[Crossy]

Thanks for the heads-up regarding Tesco. We use the Rangsit branch and thus far have always been billed in Baht, I'll keep an eye open next time I use my UK card there (I tend to use my Thai cards unless they are a bit low).

HomePro are another outfit that do the dynamic conversion thing, they are not consistent across branches, Chaeng Watthana always ask which currency, Rangsit always hit the button and end up charging Sterling unless I'm very quick, grrrr.

It can indeed get expensive on big ticket items.

[sas_cars]

If it were me, unless the amount is big, I wouldn't have gone the hassle of trying getting the princely sum of GBP 1.17 back. You effort is more worthy of being used on something more productive.

[Pib]

DCC bad, very bad for the customer; DCC good, very good for the merchant & processing bank.

Here in my part of Bangkok and based on my shopping locations only HomePro, Sizzler, and Pizza Company will always attempt the DCC ripoff unless you tell them before processing the transaction to charge in baht, not your home country currency. The Lotus I visit a couple times per week and another one I visit around twice a month don't do DCC. The choice to go DCC can be an individual store decision; not necessarily a corporate decision. But the few times a store such as HomePro has charged my card in my home country currency (even though I told them not to when handing them my card), they quickly and without a fuss cancelled the transaction and then redid the transaction in baht per my request...only takes them 1 to 2 minutes to cancel and then recharge..they did all of this on the Point of Sale (POS) transaction machine...no need to contact any bank...credit/debit card transactions are a 24/7 operation.

[jbaldwin]

DCC bad, very bad for the customer; DCC good, very good for the merchant & processing bank.

Here in my part of Bangkok and based on my shopping locations only HomePro, Sizzler, and Pizza Company will always attempt the DCC ripoff unless you tell them before processing the transaction to charge in baht, not your home country currency. The Lotus I visit a couple times per week and another one I visit around twice a month don't do DCC. The choice to go DCC can be an individual store decision; not necessarily a corporate decision. But the few times a store such as HomePro has charged my card in my home country currency (even though I told them not to when handing them my card), they quickly and without a fuss cancelled the transaction and then redid the transaction in baht per my request...only takes them 1 to 2 minutes to cancel and then recharge..they did all of this on the Point of Sale (POS) transaction machine...no need to contact any bank...credit/debit card transactions are a 24/7 operation.

Of course I knew that there is no need to contact the bank the cancel the transaction and I am sure that the staff member of told me that also knew it was untrue. The problem was that staff were not adequately trained to use the system.

[Pib]

DCC bad, very bad for the customer; DCC good, very good for the merchant & processing bank.

Here in my part of Bangkok and based on my shopping locations only HomePro, Sizzler, and Pizza Company will always attempt the DCC ripoff unless you tell them before processing the transaction to charge in baht, not your home country currency. The Lotus I visit a couple times per week and another one I visit around twice a month don't do DCC. The choice to go DCC can be an individual store decision; not necessarily a corporate decision. But the few times a store such as HomePro has charged my card in my home country currency (even though I told them not to when handing them my card), they quickly and without a fuss cancelled the transaction and then redid the transaction in baht per my request...only takes them 1 to 2 minutes to cancel and then recharge..they did all of this on the Point of Sale (POS) transaction machine...no need to contact any bank...credit/debit card transactions are a 24/7 operation.

Of course I knew that there is no need to contact the bank the cancel the transaction and I am sure that the staff member of told me that also knew it was untrue. The problem was that staff were not adequately trained to use the system.

On one of those times they did a DDC transaction on me by mistake the sales clerk trying to cancel/redo the charge couldn't figure out how to do it and called over her supervisor. As I closely watched the supervisor she pushed one button on the POS machine, then up/down buttons as in scrolling to find the transaction number in the POS machine's little display, found the transaction, pressed another button to highlight the transaction, and then pressed another button to cancel the transaction. Kinda like moving around in your smartphone menus. I've had approx. 4 DCC transaction attempted on me over the last few years and each time the cancellation was accomplished the same way by a few POS machine button pushes....takes about 30 seconds.

Easy to do, but like you said I expect the clerk was not fully trained on how to handle such a cancellation, had been shown once how to do a cancellation and when the time came to do it real-world the clerk had forgot how....or the boss' policy is the store don't like reversing a DCC transaction...we only do it if the customer complains....it's obvious they prefer doing a DCC transaction due to the 3-4% additional profit due to the lower exchange rate given otherwise they wouldn't be doing them in the first place. I don't often see farangs where I shop so I expect DCC is something that don't happen too often for many clerks.

I agree in what you are doing....it's more the principle of the thing than the money. I expect many folks just blow it off and let the store/bank take more of their money...that's OK, it's their money but it does make it harder for the rest of us who prefer the money stays in our pockets. Preaching to the choir I know.

[llp]

Been happening at Tesco in Chiang Mai for a while.

I tell them Thai Baht when I hand them the card.

The way it works at this Tesco is that the machine will print out a USD DCC slip by default, and then they press another button and it will print out the THB one which states that you declined the DCC one.

In other stores/restaurants I think the machines are set up so the clerk can choose before it prints.