Canada Follows “Suit” | Travel Guide For Your Finances

by Luke June 21, 2009

Topic(s): Foreign Transaction Fees,Lawsuits

Big foreign transaction fee news out of Canada this week for Canadians. While US cardholders have been engaged in large class action lawsuits for years, it looks like Canada is now getting on board too. Here is the gist of a Globe and Mail article explaining the important win for Canadian cardholders:

In a Quebec Superior Court judgment, the Big Six banks and Desjardins Group, Laurentian Bank of Canada, Citibank Canada and Amex Bank were ordered to reimburse tens of thousands of credit card customers more than $200-million.

Mr. Justice Clément Gascon ruled that the financial institutions were in “flagrant violation” of the province’s consumer protection law when they charged a fee for foreign currency transactions on customers’ credit cards. [Read More...]

The bits of feedback I’ve received from Canaidan readers is that foreign transaction fees are as ambiguous on many Canadian credit card statements as they are on US credit card statements. Are you Canadian — what are your thoughts about foreign transaction fees charged by Canadian banks and credit cards?

Comments (2)

2 Comments to "Canada Follows “Suit”"

on 27 Apr 2010 at 9:38 pm Posted by: QueryCurio

sounds like a good move – once I was lumped with hundereds of CAD foreign exchange fees which was not previously agreed to and just mysteriously appeared in the ridiculous and unfair conversion rate and fees from 3 banks (incl some uknown intermediary bank) – and this was just for a small transaction amount of a few thousand
on 22 Jun 2010 at 4:10 pm Posted by: f fu

Just returned from a trip from Hong Kong and China

In HK, all the charges are in HK $, thus avoiding the 3% Dynamic exchange fee. The only one that charge Dynamic exchange fee is Bank of China subsidiary that process Visa CC transactions.

In China, things gets really bad. Each time I ask to be charged in RMB, it came out to be in US$. After protest, it still come up with a statement saying that I was offer to reject the US$ option (which I did not). The bank say all I have to do is to cross out the option line and all the fine prints and I will be fine and will be in RMB. When I came home and check my statements, it all had the 3% Dynamic Exchange rated added onto my Schwab Credit card.

It is a big scam by Bank of China.. Be careful when you use credit card in China.

All my charges including Shangri-la are in US $ even I crossed out all the options in the US$ option, also wrote big sign as RMB. Is you want, I can eMail you the credit card slips.

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