Cheapest way to spend overseas discussion

hushpuppy

I am about to do a lot of travelling abroad and want to take a Credit Card so I don’t have a lot of cash on me and end up losing it by getting mugged or something. So here are my questions?

1. Is the Nationwide Credit Card still the best one for overseas spending?

2. How does this impact if all the Spanish shops and maybe other Euro countries have pre-programmed their tills to charge us Brits in sterling?

Many thanks.

grumbler

hushpuppy wrote:

1. Is the Nationwide Credit Card still the best one for overseas spending?

Yes, if you can avoid Direct Currency Conversion that you mentioned in the next question. Sometimes the only way to avoid DCC is to withdraw money with NW debit or cash card and pay cash.

2. How does this impact if all the Spanish shops and maybe other Euro countries have pre-programmed their tills to charge us Brits in sterling?

We will lose 3%+ when using NW cards for purchases.

credit card exchange rate in Spain recent thread ...

grumbler

Liverpool Victoria Card - Interest on cash :

armthorpian wrote:

...From November 2005 they are now be charging 12.9% interest (APR) on cash advances, in addition to their cash advance fee ...

Galstonian

grumbler wrote:

Sometimes the only way to avoid DCC is to withdraw money with NW debit or cash card and pay cash.

If a foreign retailer bills you in Sterling you can ask them to rebill in local currency and if they refuse you can refuse to sign for your purchase. IME it doesn't usually get that far, they simply put it through in Euros (never had this problem outside of Euroland).

pin

Galstonian wrote:

If a foreign retailer bills you in Sterling you can ask them to rebill in local currency and if they refuse you can refuse to sign for your purchase. IME it doesn't usually get that far, they simply put it through in Euros (never had this problem outside of Euroland).

I've had a hotel in Thailand do DCC, but I asked them to cancel the transaction and enter it in as Thai Baht, no problems.

However lastminte.fr forces DCC, there seems to be no option to change payment to € (I use lastminte.fr sometimes because flights can be cheaper through them, especially business class flights).

MrBen_4

What is Direct Currency Conversion exactly?

Galstonian

MrBen wrote:

What is Direct Currency Conversion exactly?

It is where you are billed in Sterling rather than the local currency for your purchase. The retailer's card processing bank does the conversion and decides on the exchange rate to use, this is almost invariably not as good as the rate you would get from your own card issuer (even those that load it with a percentage). When you are asked to sign for your purchase you should see the charges listed in £s.

So basically it is a scam to charge you more than you need to pay.

grumbler

MrBen wrote:

What is Direct Currency Conversion exactly?

See also http://www.corporate.visa.com/pd/consumer_ex_faq.jsp#faq4