Santander atms

[pianoheat]

I just noticed that Santander ATMS are now setting their own conversion rates on foreign atm withdrawels and it's not pretty I paid $15 US for 6000 persos I wont be using Santander atms any more hopefully the other banks will be slow to catch on. I haven't seen this at other banks I withdraw from

[doncoulter]

There is an easy way around this. As you click through the various screens to make your withdrawal, you will come to a familiar screen that asks you to confirm that you want to withdraw, say, 6,000 pesos plus the usual Santander ATM fee, of 30 pesos plus IVA. After you click OK or Continue or whatever, the next screen will look like the one pictured below. Notice two things here: First, the small print next to "Exchange Rate" indicates that the rate they're proposing to give you "includes 4.99% markup." Second, there are two buttons at the bottom of the screen: "Decline Conversion" and "Accept Conversion."

What's going on here is that Santander is offering you something the banks call "Dynamic Currency Conversion" (DCC). In a nutshell (google it if you want more info), they're offering to convert the pesos to dollars at a rate that is good for them but extremely unfavorable to you. According to what I've read, this is always a bad deal. And it may be a trend; we may soon see DCC at other banks here, if it's not there already. I was in Turkey last month, and many ATMs there offered to convert Turkish liras to one's choice of euros or U.S. dollars. And at least one bank's ATMs did the DCC thing automatically, without offering the choice. I didn't know about that until I checked my bank's website later and saw I'd been bitten by DCC. Needless to say, I didn't use that bank's ATMs again.

Back to the image below: What you want to do is press the "Decline Conversion" button. Santander's ATM will then proceed to give you your 6,000 pesos the way it always used to do, and you'll only pay the usual fee of 30 pesos plus IVA (which some U.S. institutions will even rebate). You'll still pay a hidden currency-conversion fee of 1%, but that's a normal Visa thing and is basically inescapable. And it's a lot better than the 5% you got nailed for.

[pianoheat]

Thank you don for the info very sneaky those banks

[jesm]

Very informative. You are our ATM detective finding all the pitfalls to best avoid.
Mil gracias.