How do you know when you're going to be charged a foreign fee?

B0bbyEwing

I got the Barclaycard app ahead of time ready to use abroad (France) and that went just fine.

Was also aware that Chase don't charge for using their debit card either so had that as a backup if needed.

All good so far.

Fully expected that if I used a debit card abroad (HSBC) then there'd be a fee of sorts. So the obvious plan was to NOT use these debit cards ABROAD. Keyword - abroad. 

Wife bought some tickets ahead of time so they'd be active for when we got to the destination. She used our HSBC account to pay - a week BEFORE we flew out of the country.

There was a 2.75% fee charged on the transaction costing us £8.55. 

Just surprised me that's all because the transaction was done while sat on the sofa in the UK. I never made the transaction myself so maybe there was something on the website which specified this, I don't know.

I guess it must be right but going forward I'd like to avoid that situation again so how do you know when a fee is going to be added? Or do you just play safe & pay for ALL holiday related things on your holiday card whether you're physically in the UK or not?

Sort of first time abroad proper so is all new to me.

la531983

The card likely charges a percentage on all transactions NOT in GBP. Doesnt matter where you are, the transaction was likely on a French website and performed in Euros.

So get that ditched.

MyRealNameToo

B0bbyEwing said:

I got the Barclaycard app ahead of time ready to use abroad (France) and that went just fine.

Was also aware that Chase don't charge for using their debit card either so had that as a backup if needed.

All good so far.

Fully expected that if I used a debit card abroad (HSBC) then there'd be a fee of sorts. So the obvious plan was to NOT use these debit cards ABROAD. Keyword - abroad. 

Wife bought some tickets ahead of time so they'd be active for when we got to the destination. She used our HSBC account to pay - a week BEFORE we flew out of the country.

There was a 2.75% fee charged on the transaction costing us £8.55. 

Just surprised me that's all because the transaction was done while sat on the sofa in the UK. I never made the transaction myself so maybe there was something on the website which specified this, I don't know.

I guess it must be right but going forward I'd like to avoid that situation again so how do you know when a fee is going to be added? Or do you just play safe & pay for ALL holiday related things on your holiday card whether you're physically in the UK or not?

Sort of first time abroad proper so is all new to me.

It's normally a charge for it not being in GBP and nothing to do with where you are physically located at the time. 

Obviously what can make life confusing is a lot of websites will detect the location of the visitor and do a dynamic conversion from the company's currency to the visitors. In most cases however when you come to pay it will actually show you will be billed in € or ¥ or $ rather than the £ it was showing as you added things to the basket. 

Mark_d

The 2.75% is a foreign currency conversion fee.  

B0bbyEwing

Just out of a curiosity thing I'm looking at the cost of everything related to the holiday to see exactly what the holiday cost.

What I find strange here is that this payment I just asked about had a fee connected to it.

In case any of you are in the know about this stuff then this was a £311.08 Premier Access fee at Disneyland Paris which resulted in a £8.55 transaction fee when using our HSBC debit card.

However at a later date but still while in the UK (don't worry I got your point about where you're physically located, I'm just saying), my wife paid for a reserved area (£43.37) for the light/firework display, also at Disneyland Paris, also with the HSBC debit card but no transaction fee was connected to this.

I'm giving the amounts there that show up on my bank statement. I don't actually know how they're priced, whether it's GBP/EUR or what.


Side note - while actually in Disneyland Paris, we were only going to get 1 days Premier Access due to the cost of it but when we saw the queues we bought another lot of Premier Access tickets for another day at a £312.21 cost, this time on my Barclaycard Travel Credit Card - with no transaction fee. 

eskbanker

B0bbyEwing said:

Fully expected that if I used a debit card abroad (HSBC) then there'd be a fee of sorts. So the obvious plan was to NOT use these debit cards ABROAD. Keyword - abroad. 

As above, 'abroad' isn't the keyword you thought it was, the charge relates to the currency.

B0bbyEwing

eskbanker said:

B0bbyEwing said:

Fully expected that if I used a debit card abroad (HSBC) then there'd be a fee of sorts. So the obvious plan was to NOT use these debit cards ABROAD. Keyword - abroad. 

As above, 'abroad' isn't the keyword you thought it was, the charge relates to the currency.

Thanks (and also thanks to others who've pointed that out). 

Learning curve. As I said, first time abroad really. I'm just glad the fee was on that transaction and not on the main holiday booking as that was a lot more.
Will better look out for these things next time round, or just simply lump everything on the holiday card.

MyRealNameToo

B0bbyEwing said:

In case any of you are in the know about this stuff then this was a £311.08 Premier Access fee at Disneyland Paris which resulted in a £8.55 transaction fee when using our HSBC debit card.

However at a later date but still while in the UK (don't worry I got your point about where you're physically located, I'm just saying), my wife paid for a reserved area (£43.37) for the light/firework display, also at Disneyland Paris, also with the HSBC debit card but no transaction fee was connected to this.

I'm giving the amounts there that show up on my bank statement. I don't actually know how they're priced, whether it's GBP/EUR or what.

It's more likely who you are buying from that will determine if you are paying in € or £ and its the currency that determines if you pay a foreign currency fee or not. 

For Disney stuff there is plenty of resellers so if you bought from different firms it's likely one was a EU based firm charging in € and the other was a UK based firm charging in £. That obviously avoids the fee for you, which is great, but often firms buying in one currency and selling in another will add a little more to the price to deal with currency fluctuations as they dont want to be updating their prices every day. 

B0bbyEwing

Ok I'm baffled with this one. Just had chance to ask the wife about this now to see how it was she paid for it.

So ok I get what you guys are saying it doesn't matter the physical location, it depends on what currency the website is selling the product in - be it GBP or EUR. That's fair enough. But I'm still baffled...

Because she said she paid for everything via the Disneyland Paris APP.

When I go in to the app for a dummy run on the Premier Access, sure enough it's in EUR & the price you're charged depends on the day of the week, some cost more than others but they're all in EUR.

So fair enough our account got a transaction fee added on I guess right.

So then I asked how she did the light / firework display add on - app once again.

Do a dummy run in the app & sure enough - it's also in EUR. Currently listed as 24EUR.

And that's the bit that doesn't make sense to me. If I get charged a transaction fee on EUR then how come I got charged on one EUR fee but not the other?

Makes no sense (to me).

QrizB

B0bbyEwing said:

So ok I get what you guys are saying it doesn't matter the physical location, it depends on what currency the website is selling the product in - be it GBP or EUR. That's fair enough. 

Taking this a step futher, I can sit on my sofa and buy tat from AliExpress (don't judge me). On the AliExpress website I can choose what currency I want to pay in. If I choose GBP I don't risk transaction charges, despite the tat being posted to me fom China.

If I choose EUR or USD (or any of the many other options), it's a foreign-currency transaction and I will incur transaction charges.

But ... the USD price is usually slightly lower than the GBP one, once converted. So I generally choose USD and then pay with one of my cards that doesn't have foreign currency transaction charges.

B0bbyEwing

QrizB said:

B0bbyEwing said:

So ok I get what you guys are saying it doesn't matter the physical location, it depends on what currency the website is selling the product in - be it GBP or EUR. That's fair enough. 

Taking this a step futher, I can sit on my sofa and buy tat from AliExpress (don't judge me). On the AliExpress website I can choose what currency I want to pay in. If I choose GBP I don't risk transaction charges, despite the tat being posted to me fom China.

If I choose EUR or USD (or any of the many other options), it's a foreign-currency transaction and I will incur transaction charges.

But ... the USD price is usually slightly lower than the GBP one, once converted. So I generally choose USD and then pay with one of my cards that doesn't have foreign currency transaction charges.

Interesting. 
More to it than it seems then eh?


Hopefully someone can shed some light on the EUR thing for me as to why we paid for two different things on two different dates, both in EUR but only one resulted in a transaction charge.