Comments on: Warning! Foreign transaction fees are popping up everywhere

By: laura

laura — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:41:38 +0000

I was shocked when I discovered that my AA Citi/MasterCard charged a 3% “foreing transaction fee” for a purchase of an ELAL flight ticket NY-Tel Aviv-NY, that I purchased over the website, in the US. The ticket was purchased in dollar currency, the invoice I received from ELAL is in dollar amount ($1423,40) and it clearly states that there will be no additional taxes nor monetary supmenents, so I was confident that would be it (already an expensive ticket, right?) Of course ELAL is not responsible ot this awful charge, but at least they could make us aware that if we purchased a ticket over the website we may be incurring in a 3% “foreign transaction fee” if we use V/MC. (I don’t know about AmEx, someone told me I could have avoided the charged if I used an AmEx card).
There was no way for me to anticipate this transaction fee. It was very clear to me that the transaction was processed in the US (US currency, US invoice, English-language website). It seems that ELAL processes website transactions at their Ben Gurion Airport, Israel, and this is why the credit card considered it to be a “foreign transaction”. Not that I purchased over the website -that doesn’t matter. For the credit card, it is the same as if I was in Israel and I purchased the ticket over a counter there. Funny, ha?
I called the credit card company. I complained and said I would dispute the charge, and the customer service representative screamed to me (Yes, she screamed) No! You cannot dispute this charge!!!!
I will, of course. F…ing credit cards!

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Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:20:18 +0000

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By: MsMyTPen

MsMyTPen — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:35:43 +0000

Fees can indeed be everywhere. A former cell phone vendor was using a processing center in Canada. There was no notice on their website or in any of their literature but every month and additional $3.99 foreign charge fee appeared. After calling the company and asking for management, I received a credit equal to a years worth of processing charges but no explanation about when detail of this would be sent to consumers or posted on their website. I left the service soon after. A fee for service, a foreign transaction fee, and bank fee for a foreign transaction was just too much!

By: Harrys

Harrys — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:13:46 +0000

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By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:55:53 +0000

Sheila,

This is a credit card fee and your agent would have no idea that your credit card was charging it to you. Your issue is with your credit card provider not with your agent. I’d call my credit card and raise hell…….not that its going to do much good ;-(

Kevin.

By: Paul Friedrich

Paul Friedrich — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:53:35 +0000

When I saw a foreign transaction fee on my account, I called CitiBank to tie it to a charge. Turned out to be for a membership fee on my wife’s new Wii fitness system. I called Wii and pitched a fit and the charge was reversed. Then, calling Citi, the CSR agreed to reverse the charge–she did twice!

If you have or can open a Schwab brokerage account, they have a VISA card that pays 2% cash-back, paid to your brokerage account, on unlimited purchases and there is no annual or foreign transaction fees, or maximum credit limit.

Through the Schwab bank account, a ATM card is available worldwide with no fees and unspecified (except for your account limit) withdrawl amounts. You pay only the commercial bank exchange rate for all foreign currency transactions.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:49:13 +0000

Chris – I don’t think you can blame Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 because it hasn’t ben implemented yet. If you look deeper into Mr. Kadam’s transaction I think you might find the answer.

The part that is unexplained about the Expedia issue with Qatar Airlways is why didn’t Expedia issue the ticket through ARC and why did Qatar Airways issue the ticket overseas? It might be that Qatar Airways through Expedia was quoting a fare that is not available if ticketed in the United States but only available if ticketed at overseas. It is possible that there could have been significant savings because of the overseas ticketing. If that were the case then it might be a foreign transaction and subject to foreign transaction fee, just as if he had been in Mumbai and used his US based credit card. I’ll bet that if he looks at his credit card statement he’ll find that the ticket fare was based in Indian Rubees and converted to USD on his credit card statement. If there is not significant savings issuing the ticket this way then Expedia has some more explaining to do.