The admin fees rates are published for all banks. At least stated from the back of your credit card statement and a list of those rates are already published in the 1st page of this forum.

What I believe is the differential is the actual forex rate used by the bank which differs from bank to bank and this is what make a difference when using your credit card overseas. I don't think this is a published rate and may differ from the bank's daily published forex rates.

I know everyone wants to know precisely how much will the bank charge and in my reply I would say it is not as if the bank is going to simply charge you an exorbitant rate just because they don't publish this information. (e.g Xe.com rate for USD1=RM3.17, bank won't charge you USD1=RM3.3. Actual cc rate will be around USD1=RM3.2x)

I don't think checking up this info is practical as rates changes on a daily basis and not to mention you actually need to capture the transaction posted rate (which can be anytime after the actual transaction rate) and not the actual transaction rate in order to accurate capture the rate used. To do the above you would need to check cc exchange rate and the transaction posted date very frequently on a daily basis - seriously guys you can do other things than just gluing your eyes to the PC checking out these info.

IMHO, just use MBB cc as the choice for overseas transactions. As we all knew SCB is the highest rate and even Alliance Bank so called admin free rates can be higher than banks who do charge admin fees! Every other banks will charge in between. Even using cash has forex charge built into them by the money changers/banks.

If you really don't want to be impose the fees ... just avoid buying anything in non RM dominated transactions. But of course this choice would seriously limit the online sites that you could buy things from.

This post has been edited by hye: Dec 5 2010, 10:21 PM

Can you be specific as to what merchant and what are you actually paying for ?
You are using the term sending payment which is rather odd.

Buying stuff are normally instantaneous except overseas merchant normally hang on to your goods until they are able to "authenticate" your card.

Calculations too optimistic coz it assumes that he had 12 consecutive payments to only be charged 13.5% per annum interest on outstanding.
I'd recommend using 17.5% as the interest rate for the sake of calculation.

BTW @nicholastze85, is there any info you left out that make the bank did not approve your flexi-pay ?
- Did you have enough CL ?
- How's yr payment history with the bank ?
- etc ?

The guys here are right ... almost 99.99% bank will approve flexi-pay is everything is OK unless there's something wrong with your cc account.

Calculate the interest this way ... (RM3500 X 17.5%) / 12 and that is your rough estimate of the interest per month.
Total interest would be x3.

One possibility is that for flexi-pay the CL allowed is sometimes not 100%. Perhaps the bank only allow 80-85% utilization of the credit limit for flexi-pay. With RM4000 CL, the highest would be only RM3400. That is the only reason that I could think of that caused the flexi-pay to be rejected.

Not everyone will get a call and myself included. They don't call but it does not mean they won't check you out. Normally those potential customers with good risk scoring won't get a call.

By placing a remark like that ... how would you rate yourself then ? Please don't generalize easily as this may create a false impression on readers here. We already have a problem with some readers expect a call from the bank every time they make a "large" transaction and they classify the bank to be bad because they don't receive the call. (Although the transaction is only a few hundred bucks)

This post has been edited by hye: Dec 9 2010, 09:07 AM

Just to share my some info here.
Recently did a transaction / same merchant (but not the same amount) on the same date using SCB and MBB cards.

Transaction Date 8-12-10. Posted Date 9-12-10
SCB report US->MYR rate to be 3.21
MBB report US->MYR rate to be 3.18

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Added on December 10, 2010, 12:02 pmCall into the card centre. Cannot do via CIMB Clicks.

This post has been edited by hye: Dec 10 2010, 12:02 PM

Allow me to update it to a 4 point precision to be able to make an apple-to-apple comparison.

SCB report US->MYR rate to be 3.2131
MBB report US->MYR rate to be 3.1755

If the above is true then HSBC (3.2188) is even more expensive ! (Quoted by bro MilesAndMore earlier)

This post has been edited by hye: Dec 10 2010, 12:48 PM

Saw the promo ... it is very similar to how fast can you send the SMS.
1. Send the SMS and wait for a return SMS to ask you a question.
2. Reply as fast as possible and wish for the best.

Problem is that @ 9am, everyone will jump in and the SMS gateway will be jammed. Good promo but the last promo really make me wonder how they select the winner. This new promo is a another potential for a repeat of this situation.

Just saw their T&C

"Sending and receiving of SMS is service provider-dependent and is beyond the control of SCBMB. There can be significant delays in the sending or receiving of an SMS. SCBMB is not responsible in any manner whatsoever for any delay howsoever caused in the sending or receiving of the SMS. The Cardholder shall be solely responsible for all fees and charges imposed by the service provider for the sending and receiving of the SMS."

Guess they are probably aware of the last promo problem.

This post has been edited by hye: Dec 10 2010, 04:14 PM

Not really. It also depends on the terminal that they use ... sometimes the merchant bank got not so good connectivity to connect to your bank. Thus your transaction will always be rejected.

Happened to me a few times. You can confirm this as when you call your bank they will say that there was no attempt to post a transaction coz it never reach them! Calling the bank before you travel will only eliminate the bank from flagging your transaction as a potential fraud when you use your card overseas. (or any unauthorized local fraudulent usage of your card locally) This connectivity problem would be totally out of your control nor Citibank as you are at the mercy of the terminal / local bank provider.

Sometimes bank will still (sometimes) call you when you are overseas although you have informed them. (And you get annoyed coz they are unaware they are making an international call just to talk to you and you bear all the roaming charges)

That's why the best is always to carry 2 cards from different banks.

This post has been edited by hye: Dec 10 2010, 04:27 PM