Amex-issued cards offer lots of discounts too. The most recent one I used was for $50 off a $120+ order from Cellarmasters. I’ve never looked at cashback cards, as there’s much better value from points in airline and hotel schemes and Membership Rewards can transfer to a variety of those.
The Amex programs are definitely rewarding with various cash back campaigns such as “shop small” and monthlies for those who both pay attention and register. “Real” Amex and at least some of the bank issued Amex offer those.
I used to agree about airline awards “value” until I tried to use my airline miles for flights. (I was platinum with 4 airlines over a number of years, not a casual traveller.) The value can be high IF you can use miles near the date you want to go, where you want to go, with a reasonable connection. Therein lies the catch as award seats are capacity controlled noting heavily serviced domestic routes are easier to get than international ones or lightly serviced domestic. One could get lucky and win the game, but the airlines often put award seats on routes less travelled between A and B that can be Raferty Routes adding the bulk of a day to an overnighter to travel time.
An airline “classic” award (the headline award “prices”) can be very high value in effective $ per mile value, but can be difficult to impossible to claim while an “anytime” award is roughly at par with the typical $0.005 per mile merchandise value and “priced” against full fare. Both are miles plus those pesky surcharges they love to add.
Hotel and car rewards are usually far less onerous to claim but once again, they “price” them against rack rates, not regular discounted rates, making the “premium value” nebulous.
Just got stung $3.97 for a transaction in AUD on a com.au site. I have no way of knowing whether the merchant is in australia or overseas nor where they will decide to process the transaction. The cusotmer service agent suggested before every online purchase i check - ridiculous and impossible.
How is this legal and not misleading and deceptive? Is it ACCC with whom we lodge the complaint or Financial Services Ombudsman? I’m furious. Frankly even in a physical store there is no way to guarantee that the store won’t process the transaction overseas. And if I can’t avoid the fee reasonably then it’s a misleading and deceptive fee.
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Hi @alec, the business has an obligation to provide ‘appropriate disclosure’ according to the ACCC. Get in touch with them using this complaints form. Thanks for taking the time out to report this and share it with other consumers here.
Unless I am missing something, just because a business has a .com.au web address and advertises in $AUD does not mean it is an on-shore operation subject to the ACCC or any Australian law requiring any disclosures.
The litmus test for complaining is first ascertaining if it is indeed an on-shore registered business.
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Actually they are required to be Australian. From netregistry.com.au comes this:
"According to auDA’s regulations, .com.au or .net.au domains may only be registered to Australian sole traders, businesses or companies. This means that during the registration process, you will be asked to supply an Australian Business Number (ABN), Australian Company Number (ACN), State Business Number, Trademark Number or Incorporated Association Number to prove eligibility.
Those hoping to register .org.au domains must also meet the same registration requirements. However, they are further restricted to only Australian non-profit organisations and registered charities. Australian associations, clubs, sporting groups, political parties and close equivalents may register .asn.au domain names, although such associations must be nonprofit.
.id.au is a new ccTLD extension specifically designed for Australian individual citizens or residents. This type of domain name must be clearly based on the registrants’ name or nickname and photo ID is required for registration.
In all cases, the .au domain must have a close and substantial connection to the person or business intending to use it."
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@grahroll, that technically may be the case but I am aware of at least one company that while having an Australian “office” with registrations, it is owned and operated by a company in the Netherlands. They have a chat and 800 number. A phone can be answered anywhere in the world today. Clicking on the name from an ASIC search reveals an office in Australia under the name of the Dutch owner.
The company is very upfront about what it is, but it does not make it clear what it is not – an Australian company excepting in legal terms. It processes all orders in the Netherlands and its t&c specifically states all related governing laws from use of the web site (a .com.au) are those of the Netherlands, excepting copyright issues that are governed by US laws.
So perhaps not as clear cut as it might appear from the technicalities of registration.
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If they operate in Australia they are bound by Australian Consumer Laws regardless of what they say. In the recent Valve case brought by the ACCC https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/federal-court-finds-valve-made-misleading-representations-about-consumer-guarantees the Courts agreed that Valve failed to observe ACL. A quote from the ACCC in this regard from Mr Sims in March 2016:
“The Federal Court’s decision reinforces that foreign based businesses selling goods and/or services to Australian consumers can be subject to Australian Consumer Law obligations, including the consumer guarantees,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said.
“In this case, Valve is a US company operating mainly outside Australia, but, in making representations to Australian consumers, the Federal Court has found that Valve engaged in conduct in Australia,” Mr Sims said. “It is also significant that the Court held that, in any case, based on the facts, Valve was carrying on business in Australia.”
From the Judge’s decision:
“Justice Edelman also took into account “Valve’s culture of compliance [which] was, and is, very poor”. Valve’s evidence was ‘disturbing’ to the Court because Valve ‘formed a view …that it was not subject to Australian law…and with the view that even if advice had been obtained that Valve was required to comply with the Australian law the advice might have been ignored”. He also noted that Valve had ‘contested liability on almost every imaginable point’.”
and from ACCC’s Acting Chair after the fine of $3 Million against Valve:
“These proceedings, and the significant penalties imposed, should send a strong message to all online traders operating overseas that they must comply with the Australian Consumer Law when they sell to Australian consumers,” ACCC Acting Chair Dr Michael Schaper said."
I do agree though that they can and do process payments elsewhere.
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I am sorry nerrel.loader, I respectfully disagree! Banks have no moral right to do this other than they can charge these fees because they have the muscle to do so. There is no transparency or warning online that anything that you want to purchase in Australian dollars and the business has a physical office in Australia, such as Microsoft Australia and Amazon Australia, that you will be charged international transaction fees.
I find this grab for money from any credit card holder unacceptable, grubby, ruthless, and particularly untransparent.
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You are right.
Cheers.
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We did not pay any card fee earlier in 2017 when we were in Europe. Has this been recently added as I was unaware of any fees?
Hi rambotrader,
Just checked my Citibank advices, and on 14/12/2015, they advised "From 18 January 2016, you will be charged an International Transaction Fee on any transaction made with an overseas merchant."Also just checked their web site that states youwill pay 3.4% “Charged for any retail purchase or cash advance transaction in:
Foreign currency, once converted to Australian dollars; and/or
Australian dollars (or any other currency), when either the merchant or its financial institution/payment processor is located overseas.
Note: It may not always be clear that the merchant or its financial institution/payment processor is located outside Australia.”
I cannot wait for future technological developments that would either bring competition to international transaction fees or eliminate them altogether. I am talking about things such as the NPP which is the National Payments Platform in Australia and the future use of the blockchain or the publically distributed ledger.
The NPP is going to be functional at the end of 2017 and mean that you could instantly transact live and online 24 hours a day between banks, businesses and individuals. Bank holidays and the need to use a bank branch during office hours will be a thing of the past.
The entire banking industry will be made more efficient and user-friendly regarding online cashless transactions. This will not lead to immediate fee relief but will open the opportunity for opposing financial and banking products that will place competitive pressure on the banks.
The blockchain will be employed across the financial system and act like a public, transparent electronic receipt system, that cannot be circumvented. Its potential use will be for national & international transactions between businesses, governments and individuals. The combination of the NPP and the blockchain will bring international transaction fees down because using them is either devoid of any cost or they will be greatly reduced due to competition.
Would that be like utility price ‘competition’? For competitive outcomes one must have true not faux competition and a vibrant market with many players. While we have many brand names across our banking industry they are mostly owned by the same 4.
BTW a dose of reality is that a few US banks each offer a card without the international fees, but even there most cards have the 3% fees.
The quasi-oligopoly that has engulfed Australia since the selling of utilities to the highest bidder, has come back to bite us all. The technologies that I referred to previously, being the blockchain and the NPP, are a good starting point only. I am hoping that governments around Australia will eschew neoliberalism for the error that that is by the time things like the blockchain, the NPP and a cashless society, have been well established. There is no guarantee that this will happen by then, but I am confident that economic rationalism is on its last legs. The solidifying of this trend is a key outcome that I am looking forward to. I hope that it will not be too long!
In the mean time I have cancelled nearly all of my credit cards and kept those without an annual fee or those that say that I will not be charged a grubby international transaction fee.
Frankly, I think that all credit cards are a complete joke and are specifically designed so that it eventually traps people in credit card debt at extraordinarily high interest rates. They are a facility that gives you instant debt finance by your issuer to cover your transaction.
Big deal!
Credit cards are a brilliant invention by very clever people who’s mission is to disguise their real purpose by reward programs, status enhancement, and ego stroking when purchasing. Credit cards have made a shit load of money for all banks who issue these sneaky devises to unsuspecting consumers.
All of this deception that is targeted at all people who have not been able to see through credit cards, become blinded by them. You become blind to things like the importance of saving money and setting up a realistic budget that is revised when goals are changed.
Credit cards are only appropriate if you have a very good salary or you have won the Jackpot of some lottery, but even then they are not needed when all anyone needs is a Debit card linked to your own account with your own money.
Don’t be lulled to sleep by them. Everyone has to pay the full amount due at the end of the month with your own money. If you don’t fully pay it off every month you will get slugged very high interest rates by those jolly people who work in banks.
Why bother with them at all?
They are a complete waste of time and they are very stressful to properly manage. Why does anyone need a credit card when there are plenty of alternatives available such as cash, Eftpos cards with chips in them courtesy of the ANZ & NAB, or Debit cards.
I have a Visa debit card with Ubank, but any debit card will do. I can use it at ALDI in a systematic way and completely avoid all surcharges. Never use their PayWave facility even though you are using a debit card because if you use it Aldi are so nice about this that they will surcharge you for your trouble.
The method needed to avoid being surcharged is to stick your debit card chip first into their reader or eftpos terminal.
Enter your four digit PIN number.
Choose if you want cash out or not.
You then have two choices.
The first one is about using Visa. Avoid the first choice like the plague because ALDI will slap a surcharge on your purchase. That is why the good people at ALDI have placed it first and not second! They are so kind and considerate.
The second choice or number 2 is the right choice as you are telling the awfully nice people at ALDI that you are using your own funds through a debit transaction and is like a Karate chop to their necks.
No matter how much you owe ALDI with the transaction before you, whether it is $2.11, or $15.43, or $19.99 or $98.41, you will never pay a single cent in surcharges so long as you follow this method. Try and see for yourself, you will be pleasantly surprised.
I have given direct feedback to ALDI about allowing all Debit card and Eftpos card users the right to use their PayWave facility without being labelled a credit card user.
Who knows when they will change this inbuilt discrimination against all Debit card or Eftpos card users when using their PayWave facility. True progress is always slow in our world.
All the very best with this method to everyone!
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Credit cards are obviously a business and they are what they are and MC and Visa have pushed into debit card processing to get their transaction fees. I’ll leave the often unsavoury business aspects for another discussion.
While this is wandering from the original topic of international transaction fees it seems appropriate to ad here. Most of our debit and credit cards have their 3% fees just because they can.
While this is a US-centric web page [note the disclaimer up top re potential conflict of interest], it is a reasonable overview of the + / - of debit cards and credit cards, at least in the US market.
Canstar has a shorter overview and is domestic.
Our laws protecting debit cards are tighter then the US, but if one travels internationally their acceptance and how you go if they are lost/stolen/compromised can be major. Some of the subtleties on our protection can be onerous. “If the money is still in the [wrong] account” and the theoretical discussion of whether your PIN was stolen or just not safeguarded. On the other side, MC and Visa and the banks generally have ‘zero liability’ clauses re fraud in their T&C but one needs to read the details.
Reality is if your debit card gets compromised anywhere, even if you get your money back you are out real dollars while it is being investigated, and that could be a serious problem if one only has a single account. Even if one is atop everything it takes days to get a new card. Need a $100?
One message is that it is wise to have at least two cards from different issuers to protect from card theft to an issuer’s systems being down.
And finally, Choice did a report last December.
That is a nice plug for them. This website is bogus. It is not Choice Australia that is behind ‘choice.community’ it is a some other bank or credit card business.
I used my CBA American Express card to purchase apps on the Microsoft Australia website. I got slugged over $7.00. Is there a distinction between this sort of Amex card and a standalone Amex card from American Express?
That is a nice plug for them. This website is bogus. It is not Choice Australia that is behind ‘choice.community’ it is a some other bank or credit card business.
choice.community is definitely run by us here at Choice. Originally it was a creation of the New Things lab, but is now generally run and moderated by our media group. If you’d like to verify, feel free to drop me a PM and I’ll send you my work email address and LinkedIn profile to look at.
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