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New Currency Conversion Trap to Avoid - Travel Tip Tuesday
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Meggan shares her recent experience in Portugal when paying with her credit card or withdrawing cash. The machines may ask if you want to "accept or reject conversion" and hitting accept may cause you to pay more in fees than you planned!
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Hey everyone, and welcome back to Travel Tip Tuesday with the Travel Mug Podcast. We hope you're doing well. Always happy that you are here. Jenn, how are you this fine Tuesday? I am doing very well. About to head to Copenhagen, so getting very excited As you should be. Well, I have recently actually returned from Portugal, so be sure, everyone, to tune in to our next full episode after this one to hear about my time there. But in advance of summer travel season, because we like to give here on the Travel Mug Podcast, I wanted to talk in advance of that about something that likely has been happening maybe for a while, but we hadn't run into on our previous trip to Europe. Um, it's an irritating topic, I will say this, and one that shouldn't even exist, but here we are. There's lots of those in the world. on the podcast in the past, we have actually covered that when traveling abroad and withdrawing cash or paying with a credit card, you should always either decline conversion or choose to pay in the local currency depending on the situation. Now, still the case, those things still exist, and during our time in Portugal, however, there was a new option that we had not seen before, and it didn't happen every time, so you need to watch for it, because it does seem to depend on the POS system being used by the business or company. So we did pay with credit card a lot, um, also paid with a lot of cash, too, which I'll cover in the episode when the time comes. But when you do pay with a credit card, it would ask us, of course, if we wanted to pay in euros or Canadian dollars, and of course we chose euros, and that used to be that. You paid, you left. This time, however, after the first option to pay in euros, we were then asked again if we wanted to accept or reject the conversion. So previously, it was just the first option, but now to confuse the user, there is another option to accept or reject. And not knowing the first time, because we hadn't seen this before, we just kinda like panicked and accepted, and not that it's the end of the world, but we then realized what was happening. So you always choose the local currency, and then you second time now have to choose Reject. They're just trying another step to try to get you to spend more money through their conversion. And again, I'm not saying that this is new, but it is new since last time we were in Europe, which I guess was 2024 at this point. Um, and it's… Actually, no, it was actually last year in Barcelona, Yeah. there, so it's honestly so sneaky, and it shouldn't be allowed. So a word of wisdom, if you see this on your upcoming travels, use local currency on POS machines and then reject, or they will get more of your money than they deserve. So Jenn, have you seen this before, or will this be new for you on your upcoming trip as well? Yeah. No, I haven't seen this before, but like I said, we're heading to Copenhagen soon, and, uh, when we were making a plan on, you know, how we were gonna pay for things, uh, we planned to exclusively use one of my credit cards because it does not charge foreign exchange fees. So, and also, I tried to get Danish krone at the bank, and they couldn't order it in for me, so that was Why? I don't know. The bank was like, "We don't bring this currency in." And I was like, "Okay, guys, then, alright. Well, you may have to use a bank machine there I might have to use a bank machine there. here we are. I will be keeping this in mind. It is very good information to have Yes, definitely. Well, that is it for this week's Travel Tip Tuesday. We hope this is helpful if you run into this situation in your summer travels and at least can save you a few bucks. Every dollar matters. As always, you can find us on social media at Travel Mug Podcast, on our website travelmugpodcast.com. If you enjoy the show, you can buy us a coffee to help support us monetarily. The link is in the show notes or leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. And until next time, safe travels and don't forget your travel mug, and farewell to you
