The following: I’ve ordered the new Lego Space Shuttle model. Went on the Lego website, selected Switzerland as my country. All products were shown in CHF, I didn’t even have the choice to pay in another currency.
Hence, I decided to pay with my UBS Mastercard, to cash in on the sweet juicy mighty kickback of 0.4% in Keyclub points. Now UBS is charging me their 1.75% transaction fee, because the transaction, albeit being in CHF, was carried out in Denmark.
If I had known I’d used my Neon card instead. No cashback but no transaction fee, either.
Is there an easy way to figure out in advance where a CHF credit card transaction will be carried out?
I haven’t found a method to spot that in advance.
It’s more likely to happen from international shops that offer their own Swiss subsite. And if you choose Dynamic Currency Conversion, which I never do.
Happened to me on Kaffekapslen.ch, incidentally also from Denmark. And I think Shop-Apotheke as well.
Lego also fits that.
The foreign surcharge can be avoided by using Paypal. Use it if it’s offered.
When in doubt I use my Revolut. As a Metal user at least I get 0.1% cashback.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know if a merchant is using a foreign subsidary to bill you. The best is to use a other credit card all the time.
Honestly, this 1.75% transaction fee is quite a scam. Now, I try to always use revolut
We have a UBS family package and use the UBS credit cards for all domestic transactions and then spend the Keyclub points on other things. All foreign credit card payments are done with a Neon credit card. After a wild Excel orgy I came to the conclusion that we save money this way.
Yes, it’s better to do that.
However, the UBS packages are the most expensive on the market. At least the hotline is quite good.
You should go with Cumulus credit cards and Neon
…do make it quite clear that you’re ordering from a Danish merchant.
Certainly not “impossible” to know in advance here.
…which would be correct IMO, even though their customer service’s postal address is located in the United Kingdom.
We could argue about the price itself - but I wouldn’t call it a scam. Foreign transactions do not only carry a higher risk but probably higher fees for the issuing bank and certainly incur higher costs (though that should be compensated for by higher interchange fees).
so should @Neville call them and complain or figure out what they say how to spot a foreign transaction in advance?
If you ask me, it is against the law if a customer has no way to figure out the cost of a service in advance (Preisbekanntgabeverornung) but IANAL
I have the Swisscard Cashback cards and I pay no fees on Spotify, which is billing CHF from Sweden. Do they whitelist some merchants? I can see people taking it badly if the get charged extra for Spotify…
But then when you pay CHF to Too Good to Go, which is based in Denmark, you get the fee.
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