Surprise with foreign transaction fee

[fishlist]

I have a Spotify Australia account but the credit card statement reads 

SPOTIFY STOCKHOLM CREDIT CARD PURCHASE and I have been charged a foriegn transaction fee.

I have now seen that this seems to be a rather common problem. What surprises me is that I was not made aware of this. Could you help rectify this, preferably with a refund of the excess amount. And let me know if I will continue to be charged from a STOCKHOLM account ???

[LordRollin]

Hi @fishlist. Foremost, I'm sorry to hear that you've run into this spot of trouble. Unfortunately any dispute over foreign transaction fees will need to be taken up with your bank, as it is their policy that determines if and when you get charged for something like this. 

I've been advised to request that you try and contact your bank and see if you can get this resolved with them first. Hopefully they'll be able to reverse the foreign transaction fee on your account. If they refuse to help you, your next step will be to reach out to customer service and hopefully they'll be able to try and help in some way. Please do take the time to contact your bank before reaching out to support, as they will advise you do the same thing as the first step in their troubleshooting.

Support can be reached one of three ways: through the online contact form; on twitter by reaching out to @SpotifyCares; or by sending a message to the Spotify Cares Facebook page. Please be aware that responses may take anywhere from 24-48 hours depending on the volume of tickets support is currently handling.

In regards to the contact form, upon filling it out you should receive a confirmation email, usually a generic message containing the information you provided and instructions to visit these forums. If after 24 hours you do not hear back from a support team member, please reply directly back to the confirmation email, even if it originates from a no-reply address. If you do not receive this confirmation email, please check your spam folder. If it is not present there, please attempt using one of the other contact methods, or, if you are unable to use the alternatives, please let me know.

[fishlist]

Hi LordRollin

Thank your for the reply. 

I am afraid the bank has the right to charge me an overseas transaction fee if my account is being billed in "Stockholm" which is what is stated on my credit card statement. The invoice comes from Spotify Australia Pty Ltd which would require transaction to happen within Australia which will mean the bank will not charge me a fee. 

I will use the online contact form to provide these details but finding the form itself took a while :). Hope someone replies soon.

Thanks again.

[Emm316]

Same thing is happening to me, what is the resolution that came from this?

[fishlist]

They don't seem to understand the issue well , atleast some of them. After
persisting and explaining it them a few times they decided to cancel the
premium subscription and asked me to sign up again and it worked. The next
payment as gone through as Spotify Australia. Hope this helps. Let me know
if you need more information

[Emm316]

Thanks!

I will do the same, but first can you just confirm that you did not loose your playlists etc in the process?

[fishlist]

Not sure. I wasn't worried as I didn't have many. Check with them. Maybe you could save your playlists etc if you follow the link they send you after cancelation.
Good luck

Below is the final reply that helped me..........,,,,

Thanks for getting back to us and taking the time to explain your concerns.

We're sorry to see that you're affected by this, cancelling the subscription and resubscribing will fix this.

We can do it in our end. Please validate the following information:

Last 4 digits of your credit card
Date of birth
Postal code
As soon as we have your account back to Free you can re-subscribe.

Hope to hear from you soon. If you need something else, let us know.

[seanj]

This is clearly a bigger issue that is affecting multiple people. I've also been charged an international transaction fee.

I contacted the bank and they said it was becaue the transaction was processed overseas. Seems fair. I contacted Spotify and they said no the transaction was processed in Australia.

Which one is it and how do we avoid the fee?!?!

[fishlist]

The problem seems more complicated than what it seems.

After the initial solution they offered me, I thought everything was fine (see above).

However, after I changed my credit card details to NAB I got slapped with the fee again. I changed it again to CITI and I dont have the fee now.

So far only the NAB issued AMEX card has charged me a fee. The other 2 I have used have not. I am wondering if some specific cards are processed by the bank/spotify in a particular way - ending up showing as an overseas transaction.

[Emm316]

I get the fee on a CITIBANK card...

[seanj]

Clearly multiple people are having the same issue, no real resolution yet from Spotify. Multiple banks involved so its definitely not specific to one bank and must be something that Spotify has done on their end. Has anyone had any luck?

[teesheezy]

I had the same problem, all they did was to tell me to deal with the bank because it was the bank who charged me. No solution was suggested. I am quite disappointed with their customer service to be honest, and this is my first month subscribing to the premium service.

[Stelyio]

Did you switch to Visa/Mastercard and it works fee free?

[fishlist]

It has worked for me but has not for others. I currently use a CITI issued VISA card and dont have the fee.

It might be worth writing to them with information collected here and credit card statements -  and also forwarding a copy of the same to the banks.

If there is still no solution, I am wondering if the matter can be taken up with the Ombudsman.

[Stelyio]

I think you should, I would too! It’s just disgraceful. My understanding is if the local gateway is in Australia, it’s okay but they re-route transactions overseas to save costs, but then we are slugged for it.
Not very nice

[Tracy8]

The same thing has happened to me with a PayPal subscription tied to CBA Visa card. On the credit card statement it says that it's Spotify GB (assuming Great Britain). This is only a recent change as I've had my subscription for a while now. Spotify need to sort this out or I'm cancelling my subscription. 

[Stelyio]

The best explanation of all the new changes can be found in this blogpost.

As explained in the blogpost, one of the changes to the terms is an update to the name and address of the Spotify company that provides your service (and which is the legal entity responsible for your data). In the past, this was often a local Spotify company; in Belgium, for example, it was Spotify Belgium. This company will now be Spotify AB everywhere but the US, in order to better reflect the reality of our business operations. Keep in mind, that as a practical matter, it’s still the same “Spotify” - we just have had multiple operating entities and we’re now streamlining our operations.

Because the Spotify company providing service in all countries outside of the US has been updated to Spotify AB, all users outside of the US will see this reflected on their receipt.

We hope this will clear some things up. We’re only an email away if anything comes to mind.

That’s what they told me

[fishlist]

Which blog are you talking about ? In any case, I have read the information about how they are changing the terms and had to accept it when I recently updated my app. But the problem we all seem to have had predates it. It will be very interesting to see how my payment is reflected this month. If I notice a fee on the current card I have used - I will be cancelling subscription. There are other services that I could use.

[shanenkatie]

Hi All, 

My first month of Spotify Premium and on my Credit Card (CitiBank) the $17.99 shows from Spotify GB and I have been charged the international transaction fee! 

Please sort this out - seems there are a lot of people getting the same issue.