It’s not just Spotify. I had the same issue with McAfee a few years ago and they even had an office in North Sydney. The invoice was in Australian dollars, sent from their North Sydney office and payment to an Australian bank. I of course paid in Australian dollars from an Australian bank account. Yet when the transaction appeared on my bank account there was a foreign transaction fee. When I questioned it I discovered that the money was not retained here but sent to their office somewhere in the USA and I had to pay the charges. Nowhere is any documentation was this declared.
Since then, more and more companies are doing this. Not only is this deliberately obscured (in my opinion) would go as far as saying this is quite deliberate to fool the consumer and advantage the company involved.
Thanks for the reply. I will look into your points. As to checking into a hotel, my situation was one of booking through the hotel’s website and not a third party. Also, I acknowledge that if one damages property one is liable to compensate, my point is that if I think the damage claim lacks merit, ie is bogus, then in my experience (a few years ago) that a debit I considered unauthorised on my visa CC was easier to defend than a debit to a debit card, which skimmed money from my savings a/c. As I wrote, I want to read the info at the links you provided as things may have changed in the last few years.
Also I know that when I checked into a hotel with a DR card in Singapore, I was told that in addition to the charges I agreed to on bookings, the hotel will place a HOLD on $1,000 which will be released by my bank in 2 weeks’ time in the event that the hotel does not make a claim for damage or unpaid sums. This can be a problem for folks with a very low balance in the savings a/c to which the DR card is linked as the funds on HOLD are quarantined and cannot be used by the customer until “released” by the bank.
