Foreign Transaction Fees?

As of this past week,when I buy Lindens,a foreign transaction fee has started appearing on my CC statement.
This has shown as a seperate charge from the Linden transaction of anywhere from eight cents to thirty cents depending on the amount of lindens purchased.
These haven't shown up before last week and I was wondering if this was a charge that was included in the transaction before and just now being handled as a seperate charge?
Anyone else seeing these charges on their statements lately?
It's no big deal by any means..but i'm just curious.

Mac

You might want to check with your CC company to find out who is charging for the currency exchange, them or LLabs. Just a thought.

I get the foreign transaction fee on my card too. I didn't get it from the start, but a few months into SL it appeared for me. It is down to your credit card company, not LL. It seems some companies include it in any transactions, but some show it as a separate transaction.

The banks or CCs in the real world use seem to be up to all sorts of tricks to charge fees especially if you are abroad or dealing with a different currency. So I guess it is your CC company putting the fee on.
My CC is through my bank and they do not make such charges so I stick with them.
But what I find now when in Spain when paying the hotel bill or drawing cash from an ATM is that it must say it in Euro. They try to present the amount in UK £ if they do the Spanish bank gives me a poor rate of exchange. First time if happened my hotel and car hire cost me £100 more! They will not catch me again.
Check with your bank/CC company on your case and if neccessary change bank/CC.

I used CC for my L$ but recently used my PayPal accont, maybe you have PP.
Love
June

Thanks for your quick replies Jacinda and Prawnyloks.
I've been using this same card for SL over a year now is the only reason I was curious that it just began recently.
Like i said..it's not a big deal..we're talking pennies here. But i'll take your advice and check with my credit card company just to satisfy my curiousity.
Thanks for taking time to answer *waves* Mac

And thanks June..I use a Visa debit card..so that may be a new charge they started..heheh.

Funnily enough I think I started to see the charge on my CC when my company changed my card from Visa to Mastercard. Maybe it's new policy these days

I don't know about LL but I bought a computer journal program from an American company last year, paid in dollars using my (UK) Visa debit card and the bank added something like 10% to the purchase price for the currency conversion

So you may find it applies to debit cards but not to credit cards or Paypal.

Elfrida

I have been talking to both the bank and SL billing about this issue.

The bank says the reason I was never charged this fee in the past is that it has something to with the network chosen by the merchant and the exchange rate at the time of the transaction, she said that most likely the merchant processed the transaction differently than they had in the past. She also said that whether or not a fee is assessed can vary from month to month depending on how the charge is processed and the conversion rate at the time. I am working on getting the actual text of the policy so I can post it here.

I contacted SL billing and they thought that perhaps it had something to do with the fact that we topped out our tier at the beginning of the year and that it might be related to the actual dollar amount be transacted. SL billing rep suggested I contact concierge services and file a ticket on the matter.

The bank is charging 3% of the transaction so I can empathize with you Elfrida as 10% is just a ridiculous amount of money to pay for currency conversion. Especially when I found out that were I buying this currency directly from my bank to travel abroad there would be no fee (although it's very possible there is a fee buried within the actual conversion rate).

Bottom line is, I am going to change the charges over to my credit card vs my debit card and hope this solves the problem. Thank you sweetheart (Max) for bringing up the issue here as I have learned a lot reading everyone's posts.

I have a friend who also started getting these charges recently. It is not because he is buying $L or selling $L. It sjows up on his CC statement as SevondLife.Com foreign fees. It sounds to me like its from customers purchases in-world. And if thats the case will have to determine where there customers are pull shops from that sim or not accept certain types of payments. It is petty amounts but then the bank adds a fee to it also. It could quickly wipe out any profits if it continues. Linden should know where these charges are coming from. If they dont then all sales will stop until they figure it out. He has submitted a ticket on the issue so well wait and see what they have to say. It was nice to know that we arent alone and your responses have shed some light on it.

Here's my take on this:

Linden Research, Inc. has chosen to use a British bank to process credit card payments made to them. Most of us in the US use US-based banks for our credit cards. Many of those US banks (or the credit card servicing companies some of them use) charge an additional fee when we make a charge that goes to a foreign bank, whether or not there is a need to convert to foreign currency. I'll speculate, without having done any research, that such fees are allowed both under the rules for the credit card networks (specifically MasterCard and Visa), and under the agreements we each have with our banks. You should read your own agreements carefully to be sure of that part.

If I were to go online to buy something from a British company (e.g. Harrods), I would fully expect to pay a fee for conversion to foreign currency. Indeed, if a British (or other non-US) company had a website that offered things for sale priced in US dollars, I would still not be surprised at a foreign transaction fee. All that would mean is that the non-US company has chosen to fix an exchange rate for their US customers, so that the customers wouldn't have to guess at it. It may seem a little odd to process a charge in US dollars at a bank not located in the US, but I can't see anything improper with that per se, and it all makes sense for a company located in that country trying to sell to US customers.

But Linden Research, Inc. is a US based company, not a UK based company. If they think they can get better servicing or servicing costs through a UK bank, that's fine, and that's their decision. What's not fine, however, is to advertise themselves as a US-based company, offer a service to US consumers, priced in US funds, accept those funds using standard credit/debit card networks, and then process them in a way that increases the advertised cost to US consumers. The question is whether they are in violation of consumer protection laws by using a credit card processing service that adds fees to the cost, when there's no disclaimer and no expectation that such charges would be added.

Not this again .

(Current KB)
The old one had a bit more information:
---If LL was strictly for US-based people (or a large majority) you can expect their credit card processor to be domestic as well. Since US residents aren't the majority, you can make no assumptions about the credit card processor.

Where a company is located isn't terribly relevant when it's an online business.

Based on some info I've gleaned from other threads, this is a somewhat common "hiccup". LL uses 3rd party payment processors in N.America and Europe. And has switch between them at least a couple times. So for people with payment info that has been on file a long time, your payments have been juggled between these processors. This can randomly result in a default payment handler on the wrong continent and incurring those fees. One recommended solution is to switch your payment info on record with LL. This will refresh your info in their database and it may attach you to a processor located more local to you. It is not clear if simply re-entering the same info will trigger this. But switching to something else than switching it back should. If you still get the fees, after switching you may be stuck. The fees come from the CC/bank and do vary wildly. So trying a different card/bank may have a lower/no fee. Also Paypal has been recommended by many, since they are a multinational corp anyway, they can often provide local currencies at no fee. Seems to depend abit on where you live. Good luck.

Related to which country LL's billing service provider is based in:


http://www.massively.com/2008/05/12/peering-inside-linden-labs-new-billing-provider/

I don't buy it. The number of overseas customers isn't relevant at all, but the business location, and more importantly, the way they present that location, most certainly is.

What you're saying is that all a US based company has to do to evade US consumer protection laws is to start selling to people outside the US in addition to their US customers. That's clearly unreasonable.

Note that the assumption isn't about where the credit card processor is located, or who it is. The assumption is that the transaction won't be treated differently from other domestic transactions as a result. If I buy gas at a Shell or BP station in the US, I can expect the transaction to be treated as a domestic transaction even though the parent companies are overseas. If I buy chocolate from the Lindt store at the local mall, it wouldn't be acceptable for charges to show up just because Lindt is a Swiss company. In fact, if I bought online through their US site, I could still expect it to be treated as a domestic transaction, mostly likely through their US subsidiary, for the simple reason that they've presented it as for US customers and haven't included disclaimers to the contrary.

Conversely, if I buy at amazon.co.uk, I know there will be some fees. Even if I go to a foreign site that prices in US dollars (as some web hosting providers do), I shouldn't be surprised at a transaction fee. But such sites make it clear that they're not located in the US.

So billing from a foreign country makes no sense. These fees really do not make sense do they? They are chiseling quarters.

I get it too. A whole .30 cents. Since LL has billing in the UK, the USA gets this on their statement.

It'd make sense to me if LL had a billing department in the USA and the UK.