When we travel internationally, we rarely use cash. There are very few places that are “cash only,” so we use credit cards for virtually all of our expenses, making sure that we use cards that don’t charge a foreign transaction fee.
However, many people, for whatever their reasons, still like to pay cash, and many get their cash from local ATMs.
Unfortunately, there are bunches of ATMs, especially in Europe, that are rigged to take advantage of international travelers. Watch this:
One of the comments to the video, by Alesha and Jarryd NOMADasaurus, was particularly disturbing:
Warning about this ATM – They even rip you off if you decline the conversion. We recently used one in Prague, and avoided the high withdrawal suggestions and sh***y currency conversion offer, instead choosing 2000 CZK and declining the currency conversion. However when we checked our bank statement afterwards, they charged us the equivalent of 2376 CZK! Our bank card has zero international fees, so Euronet still scammed us about 20%. Avoid at all costs.
Of course, the question about currency conversion is the same thing that happened to us when we were in England. We didn’t get a choice in that case and didn’t even notice it until later on. The frustrating part was that we knew better!
If you’re in a tourist area in Europe, you’re likely to see the Euronet ATM logo on almost every machine that’s not operated by a bank. They’re also one of the worst offenders of deceptive practices designed to take as much money as possible from unsuspecting tourists. But they must have noticed that people have caught onto the Dynamic Currency trick and are choosing to use the local currency. So they’ve found a new way to take a few extra dollars from every transaction.
But still…let this be a lesson for you! 😉
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