Where Not To Shop, And How Not To Pay

This is technically a post about PolCard and them charging in U.S. Dollars again, but this time I had to add the merchant – who kind of sucked during this process.

On Wednesday my wife walks into this store called Silver Line on Nowy Swiat to get a Christmas Gift for my Sister-in-law. She was with another Expat and didn’t want to seem a little crazy (like I tend to be I suppose) so when the receipt came back and showed that she had been charged in Dollars (she was not given a choice), she humbly asked the woman behind the counter why she was charged in Dollars. Apparently the woman took offense, and shrilled back ‘What’s the Problem?!” and was generally unhelpful. My wife left frustrated because she had basically been cheated by about $4 on her purchase.

So after she tells me the story – I go back the store on Thursday to fix the situation. I insist on the Shopkeeper refunding the credit card (in Dollars) and charging me separately for the same amount in Zloty. At first the Lady in the store insisted – “No Way! Can’t Be Done! Impossible!” And she maintained several times that it was IMPOSSIBLE to fix this. Then another customer walked in, and I said “But it is possible, because I’ll simply call my credit card company and have the charge reversed.”

That threat seemed to make a difference.

The lady then got on the phone (with PolCard maybe?) and spent nearly 10 minutes finding out how to get the charges refunded to my credit card, in Dollars. In the end, that's exactly what happened. I paid with a different card and was on my way.

Of course, this wasn’t perfect. The exchange rate had dropped from one day to the next, so the amount I paid ($76.96) was less than the price refunded ($75.33) by $1.63 – which would have been a loss, but I figure that with the proper exchange rate, I ended up only spending $73.12. So me going all the way back down there and making her fix the error, saved me a whopping $2.21 overall.

But that’s not the point!

The point is that every single time that an Expat gets charged in Dollars without being given a choice – we should say something. A colleague points out to me that all this is likely to do is upset the store workers, but at some point, if it’s wide-spread, they will stop forcing this on the consumers.

Maybe.

In the mean time, there are two lessons here:

1. Please refuse to accept being charged in Dollars when you’re not given a choice

2. Unless you want to deal with a not-pleasant woman when jewelry shopping, do not go to Silver Line on Nowy Swiat!



And as a side note – If you are the proprietor of Silver Line and you’d like me to remove the references to your horrible customer service – I will take all references off this post for the price of 1.63 American Dollars. That’s what I estimate I got over-charged. See? I’m thrifty, but I am fair.