Charged in Pounds £ Instead of Euro €

simonhunter87

Hi everyone

Hope this is the right place to post.

I made 2 purchases recently - flights from Vueling and a hotel booking called Mirror from Prestigia.

Mirror Hotel/Prestigia

• purchased from Prestigia in € clearly listed in €
• deposit charged by Prestigia in €
• balance taken directly by hotel (pretigia pass them card details i guess) in £ even though all emails from Prestigia confirm it will be in €
• £ value, in my opinion, is a poor rate about £20 more than a direct exchange should be
• the main point is it should be charged in € anyway
• contacted them and asked to fix it - hotel said they always charge in client currency, pretigia said it was charged in €, bank said charged in £
• i logged a transaction dispute with Halifax and asked Prestigia to get the hotel to refund and charge in correct currency

Vueling

• website only showed me an amount in €
• email only shows amount in €
• i have the halifa clarity credit card so no € charges, so i choose to pay an extra €15 so i could pay by credit card rather than face massive credit card cahrges for paying in a foreign currency
• the transaction was put through in £
• i called Vueling and they said they always charge in €
• i called halifax and lodged a dispute against the transaction

What do you guys think? It's annnoying me as I can't see anywhere saying it should charge £ but I can see it explicitly saying it charges € everywhere. I even paid extra in 1 case to pay on credit card to avoid conversion fees. They have both gone through with bad exchange rates and no notification.

Have I done the right thing? Missed anything?

Cheers
Simon

grumbler

If you authorised amount(s) in €, but were charged in £ instead, then you can demand chargeback from your CC company:
E.g.: Chargeback reason codes list

Visa: V76
Incorrect currency or transaction code – the Card
Issuing Company is stating that the transaction
was not processed in the correct currency, or the
cardholder has been charged a conversion difference
when an incorrect charge has been requested.
...
Mastercard: M46
Correct transaction currency not provided – the Card
Issuing Company is stating that the transaction was
not processed in the correct currency.

After this contact the company and pay again. This time make sure that they don't rob you by using so called Dynamic Currency Conversion.

MSE article: Visa, Mastercard & Amex Chargeback

ETA: what do you mean by saying "direct exchange should be"? What card were you using? Do you know that most cards charge ~3% for conversion if charged not in ££?

simonhunter87

Thanks for that.

Not sure what the last but means exactly? I paid by halifax clarity credit so no charges or loads in top.

grumbler

mrmadcat wrote: »

Not sure what the last but means exactly? I paid by halifax clarity credit so no charges or loads in top.

This meant that you didn't say that it was Clarity. For other card DCC isn't necessarily worse than ~3% charged by your bank.

Roger1

grumbler wrote: »

This meant that you didn't say that it was Clarity.

mrmadcat wrote: »

[*]i have the halifa clarity credit card so no € charges

Am I missing something?

prowla

When you make a foreign CC transaction, they often give you the choice of paying in local currency or £.

If you choose to pay in £, then they will apply their conversion rate and fees.

If you choose to pay in local currency, then your CC will apply the conversion.

I believe that it is cheaper to do the 2nd of those.

grumbler

Roger1 wrote: »

Am I missing something?

No, you are not, but I certainly did despite looking for this information.

Hardly a surprise as the OP was ill-composed and overloaded with non-essential details.

SuperHan

Are you sure you've been charged in £? You can't tell on the online banking for the Clarity until your actual PDF/paper statement is generated, so looking in the recent transactions may mislead you.

eDicky

SuperHan wrote: »

Are you sure you've been charged in £? You can't tell on the online banking for the Clarity until your actual PDF/paper statement is generated, so looking in the recent transactions may mislead you.

Well, if you know the transaction amount in euros and can see the amount in GBP in your online account, it's simple enough to calculate the exchange rate and see if it corresponds with the MasterCard rate or not. I guess that's what OP did, not sure if he mentions...

Anthorn

Could be either of three possibles: You authorised payment in GBP without noticing, The retailer converted the Euros into pounds before charging it or Halifax has converted Euros into pounds without providing info on the conversion. Not being aquainted with Clarity I can't really say for sure.

glider3560

mrmadcat wrote: »

Mirror Hotel/Prestigia

• purchased from Prestigia in € clearly listed in €
• deposit charged by Prestigia in €
• balance taken directly by hotel (pretigia pass them card details i guess) in £ even though all emails from Prestigia confirm it will be in €
• £ value, in my opinion, is a poor rate about £20 more than a direct exchange should be
• the main point is it should be charged in € anyway
• contacted them and asked to fix it - hotel said they always charge in client currency, pretigia said it was charged in €, bank said charged in £
• i logged a transaction dispute with Halifax and asked Prestigia to get the hotel to refund and charge in correct currency

This, unfortunately, is quite common with hotels. For some reason (even at big chains) they get sent the card details and manually enter this into a credit card terminal at the hotel. The staff won't care what you get charged provided they get their money, so will just click yes/ok/enter/1 to everything prompted. You normally have to press cancel/2 or some other random number to get the machines to opt out of currency conversion.

Spain is especially bad for this, in my experience.

I often contact the hotel manager first instead of the bank. Once got a €50 refund instead of them refunding then charging again in the correct currency. Next visit at the same hotel was processed correctly in euros, so they clearly learnt a lesson.