VA/Agoda and FX fees on AUD purchases

[Pleb Status]

Booked a Melbourne hotel on Agoda via the VA website to earn the 6 VFF/$ spent (and Agoda was tied cheapest). Booking was obviously in AUD and appeared to go well.

I paid for the booking with my NAB QF AMEX. NAB have decided to charge a 3% FX fee as the merchant was not 'Australian based' (Agoda Reservations London is on the statement).

Has anybody else run into this FX fee issue when booking with VA/Agoda and their bank? The FX fee wiped out most of the advantage of booking with Agoda unfortunately.

 

[clarkkent]

Yep, this sort of thing happens with many sites. Highly annoying. fwiw Amex-issued cards don't charge the fee.

 

[Ausbt]

No. I do a lot of Agoda on two different Amex cards, both AU hotels and UK hotels. All of them (including AU) list as 'Agoda Hotel Reservation London'. All of them are booked via the AU Virgin website. There is no FX fee at all on these payments - they are precisely as quoted in AU.

On a side note, I've just finished making Retro claims for most of them. Geeze, that's painful, you really need to chase Agoda a lot for these but yes the 6 x haul is worth it.

 

[aaronm]

ANZ have never charged me an FX fee for booking via Agoda.

 

[AustraliaPoochie]

My Agoda bookings in the past go off to Singapore, (the fakeish looking rubber stamped thing on the hotel note), not London.
Never noticed a surcharge with my bank, though, I am known noticed to be not too bright.
Edit: went back to my latest booking for the Ibis Budget for Mar 16 at MEL airport, and for the nightly rate it was $129, thats what they always charge for that hotel, and no surcharge.
On my bank record, it lists the transaction as processed in "INTERNET".
Bank is one of the smaller non large banks.
I would summise it all depends on the bank.

 

[Pleb Status]

I complained to the NAB about the above and they have refunded the international transaction fee back to my account.

I do not know if that was because they were wrong in charging the fee in the first place, or I threatened to close the account....

All future Agoda bookings with be on the FX free Bankwest World MC and I will not worry about the extra 0.5pt/$ spent.

Now to see if the VFF points will post after the stay next month... but that will be another story.

 

[Ghostdunks]

Have seen a few references to 6VFF per $1. Just to confirm, this is because of your VA status right? an extra 3pts/$1 because you're platinum?

 

[Pleb Status]

Have seen a few references to 6VFF per $1. Just to confirm, this is because of your VA status right? an extra 3pts/$1 because you're platinum?

Yes. The 100% bonus for WP makes it 6pt/$ spent.