200 Bhat ATM Fee ?

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

23 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Just to follow-up on the Bank of China ATMs issue.

This past weekend, I took 3 U.S. MC debit cards I had at home and did test withdrawals with each of them. Each worked fine, no local fee and no problem.

..........

The currency exchange rate on my cards seems to be fine. As of this posting, MC hasn't yet posted their rates for Monday. But for my Sunday transactions, I got 34.781, and MasterCard's posted network rate for last Friday was 34.80. Of course, one's local home country banks have the ability to impose their own foreign currency exchange fee on their own cards, apart from what MC does. My home banks claim they don't charge any FCF on their MasterCards.

Overnight, MC posted their network exchange rate for USD to Thai baht of 34.70 for Monday.

Thus, my Sunday withdrawal -- a weekend date for which MC doesn't publicly post rates -- ended up being close to the Friday rate and not so close to the lower Monday rate.

Bottom line: pretty much the normal MC network exchange rate, and no downside of a 200b ATM withdrawal fee.

 

[JimGant]

Quote

Thus, my Sunday withdrawal -- a weekend date for which MC doesn't publicly post rates -- ended up being close to the Friday rate and not so close to the lower Monday rate.

Sorry for some thread creep. But MC's failure to post weekend FX rates on their site suggests to me they're skirting the "full disclosure" mandated by both US and EU laws. That you got neither Friday's 34.80 rate, nor Monday's 34.70 rate -- but an extrapolated, but unposted, Sunday rate of 34.78 -- is more than curious.....especially when contrasted to their prime competitor, Visa.

Visa says upfront they don't determine FX rates for weekends (nor for Xmas, NewYears, nor Memorial Day). However, they do post FX rates that you will get if your transaction happens to post on one of those days. Thus, this weekend, you could be assured that an ATM pull on Saturday would get you 34.74 USD/THB (with a totally fee free Visa card); an ATM pull on Sunday -- also 34.74; and an ATM pull on Monday -- the same, 34.74.

Huh? Yeah, Visa on Friday night projects the FX rate for the following Monday (or following Tuesday, if Memorial Day is involved), then backfills this rate to the weekend -- and, if applicable, Memorial Day. (I'm sure their hedging gang can cover any projection boo boos.) Thus, you have full disclosure to know what rate you'll get as you head to the ATM machine -- if it's a Visa card you have. And per the law, ever since that major class action suit against Visa and MC for nondisclosure.

MC's Friday rate used to be what you could expect over the weekend. But John's post shows MC may no longer use this system. Whatever system they use, you're not going to find the numbers on the Web.

But, yeah, who cares. This is just a curiosity look at MC -- who, incidentally, have never, on average, given better rates than Visa with USD/THB transactions -- averaging 12 satang less long term.

But that pales, if your MC ATM card can save you 200 baht at the ATM machine.

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Jim, I can't account for the rate variation over the weekend, although any way you cut it, we're talking about small variations here. And if I had my choice, of course, I'd rather have gotten close to the higher Friday posted rate vs the much lower Monday rate.

 

It could be on MC's end, or it could be on my cards' end. I haven't used these three MC's for foreign ATM withdrawals much before, because these cards don't refund FOREIGN ATM fees, though they do refund domestic ATM fees. However, now with BofC as a withdrawal source, that no longer matters.

 

So this past weekend was my first full-blown test of using these three cards for local ATM withdrawals. Previously, I'd been using pretty much only VISA debit cards that happen to also refund foreign ATM fees. So my experience with the MCs is much more limited.