Josh Martin is a UK-based Kiwi journalist writing across travel and business topics.
OPINION: A grumbling taxi driver who refuses to put on the meter or insists his card machine isn’t working. An unmentioned tourist levy you only discover at checkout. A menu where the cost of local dishes fluctuates depending on the language it’s printed in. These are but three of the many cliché travel moments where you realise the price is not really the price.
You can’t be shielded from all forms of bill shock, but there’s an easy trick to avoid coming home to a list of unfair conversions and poor exchange rates on your bank statement. I’m talking about the pesky “convenient” option suggested by foreign ATMs and Eftpos machines called Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC).
There are few universal rules in travel, but this is one of them: When you’re paying for an item or withdrawing cash overseas and the terminal screen kindly suggests if you would like to pay using your regular home currency, always choose ‘no’ and pay in the local currency instead. Yes, it might help you budget or remind you of the NZ dollar cost (Google is also widely available), but it’s truly a bad deal for the consumer.
So what is going on in the background and why is this rip-off wallet raid becoming more common?
