I'm noticing an additional charge billed to Raincity Studios on my account every month for an "International Conversion Fee", which confuses me. I'm not particularly worried about the money itself (it probably amounts to less than $2 a year), but the Bryght website says the service costs "$19.95 US per month" and that's what we agreed to pay. Moreover, that's the amount listed on the receipts sent by email every month. It seems either sloppy or disingenuous to quietly add an extra charge beyond that agreement.
Would anyone there care to comment on this? Is this a new change following the Raincity acquisition, or has this been the case all along? Why not simply be up front about these charges?
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No disingenuousness
Bryght charges $19.95 in USD, and does not charge any currency conversion fees whatsoever. That comes from the fees that credit card companies or banks charge if the US dollars is not the currency you have the card with. (For example, my bank charges a one percent fee for U.S. dollar payments I make, my being a Canadian with a card from a Canadian bank.) So no, there is no change in the transition from Bryght to Raincity Studios owning the company: we don't charge the conversion fee and never have: the charge comes from the credit card company or bank that issued the card.
Please feel free to give us a call if you'd like to talk it over: our phone number can be found on the Raincity Studios contact page.
Thanks for the reply,
Thanks for the reply, Richard. Again, I don't mean to make a big issue of this, but I'd love to clear it up, simply because I have a responsibility to others about it.
I should have mentioned in the first post that I'm an American, and my bank is in the states. I'm sure you're correct that the conversion is coming from the credit card company (in this case Visa). However, I'm told by the bank that they would only charge a conversion fee if the purchase was made in Canadian dollars. Is it possible that Raincity is actually charging the Canadian equivalent of $19.95 US, and Visa is doing the conversion?
Billing
I've forwarded this to our billing department so they can do a full investigation, and I'll let you know what they find out.
Email
We talked to our merchant account provider today and we sent you an email detailing that we (Bryght/Raincity Studios) do not charge the international currency exchange rate fee, but that it may be your bank and/or credit card company charging this. We see that you got our email, thanks for your response.
Cheers
And thanks again for following up on this.