Always pay your credit card in the country's currency and not euro

Brendan Burgess

Founder
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I just booked flight from London to Dublin with Aer Lingus.

The price was £81.99 and they very kindly offered me the choice of paying in euro at €99.51 which I declined.

It has hit my credit card at €95.93.

I don't know why large companies don't offer their customers fair rates or else just not offer the option of paying in the local currency.

It's the same with car hire companies and petrol - they try to catch you out with their exorbitant rates for refueling.

Brendan
 
Hi Brendan,

I read the title as the opposite of what you're saying?
Amazon is a great example of this. They have the scale to offer market rates with a tiny margin, but don't.
 
Title of post should be reversed.

You should pay for flight in GBP and then let CC apply exchange rate.

Even better, use Revolut, and avoid 1.75%-2.65% commission.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
Retailers should be restricted to a maximum margin on the FX and should be obliged to clearly disclose their margin.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Caveat empor and all that. If you decide to buy stuff from a non-Euro country and ask the retailer to take Euro, the retailer first off all isn’t required to entertain your business (and take Euro), and certainly shouldn’t be forced on a max margin. What would be your basis for this?
Who should decide what an appropriate margin is for my business?

Stop buying in non Euro countries and you have no quarrels.
 
I buy my coal from a supplier in NI, I have the choice of paying in stg or euro with my credit card, I opted for sterling and the conversion was €16 more than if I had opted for Euro, that's a free 40kg bag, huge.
 
newirishman said:
Stop buying in non Euro countries and you have no quarrels.
Click to expand...
Other than the massive margins demanded by Irish retailers, the poor after-sales service, the ridiculously long delivery times with no tracking facilities, the unmanned phone-lines and unhelpful web-sites, you're probably right.

I can buy from the UK, pay UK£20 for delivery (22kg package) and have the item delivered within a specified 4-hour window on the 3rd day from my payment clearing. Computer parts priced at UK£550. My potential Irish supplier's price was €947, plus €25 delivery charge and 5 to 7 day delivery time-frame. Similar stories sourcing stuff from the US.

I took me a while to figure out why Dunnes and Musgraves source so much of their prepared and baked foods from UK sources. I can only surmise their experiences mirror mine.
 

Hi Brendan,

Was that a rip-off?

Firefly.
 
This is something that you should also watch out for on Ebay.
I purchased something this evening online for STG£17.90 and chose to pay by credit card. Ebay defaults this to charging in €uros at their exchange rate, which they told me would be €21.81. I changed this to pay in Sterling and I can see from my online banking that I got charged €20.91. Its 90c in a small transaction, but would soon add up if you were purchasing something more expensive.
 
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