Tom Tom Purchases - Currency Exchange Fee

[rpreuss]

I just ordered an accessory from TomTom. Their North American address is in Concord,Mass., and it shipped from Fort Worth, Texas. Last I checked, they were both still in the United States.

How come, when I put it on my Visa card, I get charged a Currency Exchange Fee?? Are they billing from the Netherlands?

Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[sageuvagony]

Might be a dumb question on my part, but you were in the United States website correct?

 

[greal]

I just ordered an accessory from TomTom. Their North American address is in Concord,Mass., and it shipped from Fort Worth, Texas. Last I checked, they were both still in the United States.

How come, when I put it on my Visa card, I get charged a Currency Exchange Fee?? Are they billing from the Netherlands?

Has anyone else noticed this?

Yes - I have even been charged VAT for my purchase. The ensuing phone/mail ping-pong with TomTom can be summarized by "yeah, we know we shouldn't charge VAT to people not living in Europe; we can't refund anything, so deal with it".

 

[Timon]

Call your credit card company and tell them you ordered from a US store in US $'s and you want the fee credited back to your account. Same for anyone that is charged VAT and is living in the US. The CC company should take care of the problem.

 

[maynard7]

I just ordered an accessory from TomTom. Their North American address is in Concord,Mass., and it shipped from Fort Worth, Texas. Last I checked, they were both still in the United States.

How come, when I put it on my Visa card, I get charged a Currency Exchange Fee?? Are they billing from the Netherlands?

Has anyone else noticed this?

Their payment processor must be outside the USA. Most USA credit card companies charge 2-3% for purchases billed outside the USA, even if billed in US Dollars. As far as VAT being charged, TomTom needs to get on the ball. They have no right charging VAT for purchases made from the USA, and shipped within the USA to a USA buyer. I would dispute that with your credit card company.

TomTom makes little effort to accommodate American users. This is seen in the GPS voices that say "motorway" instead of freeway or highway, and that speak in meters rather than miles. I wish there were some way to combine the best aspects of Garmin and TomTom into one unit. TomTom should have a team devoted to the American market, and customize their units accordingly.

 

[dhn]

TomTom makes little effort to accommodate American users. This is seen in the GPS voices that say "motorway" instead of freeway or highway, and that speak in meters rather than miles. I wish there were some way to combine the best aspects of Garmin and TomTom into one unit. TomTom should have a team devoted to the American market, and customize their units accordingly.

You can adjust your measurement settings to imperial if you'd like and computer voices will respond accordingly.

I use Susan_US who speaks metric because that is what our distance measurements are in Canada but she also says 'highway' because that's what North Americans call them.

 

[maynard7]

You can adjust your measurement settings to imperial if you'd like and computer voices will respond accordingly.

I use Susan_US who speaks metric because that is what our distance measurements are in Canada but she also says 'highway' because that's what North Americans call them.

I should not have gone off-topic and ranted about TomTom's treatment of USA customers. The thread was about a "foreign currency fee" on the buyer's credit card. I think I want to start a new thread about this other topic. But anyway, to answer the last post, I am using the "Mandy" voice because she talks in "quarter miles" instead of yards. I have "units" set to miles instead of kilometers, but the other "US English" voices speak in yards (which is basically meters). The other units I've used (Garmin, Magellan, Mapopolis on my Pocket PC) talk in miles and feet. "Mandy" actually sounds like a British woman trying to speak with an American accent.

Ok.... now back to the original topic at hand. That foreign transaction fee is only 2-3% extra, but it's uncalled for. They should employ a payment processor in the USA instead of running their charge cards through a foreign entity. The USA is a huge consumer market; it's not like they're selling one or two items a week to people in tiny Uruguay. If TomTom markets and sells a large quantity of products in the USA, they should have a USA operation that bills customers in our local currency, without having to pay Value Added Tax to a foreign government. If I were buying something on a foreign company's web site (and especially items priced in a foreign currency) it wouldn't surprise me that this would happen, but this wasn't the case, and I can understand the original poster's frustration with this.