My foreign currency payments used to default to PayPal charging my card in the foreign currency and letting my card provider handle the conversion. As my card doesn't surcharge for foreign currencies, this is obviously better than letting PayPal do it.
Today, I tried to make a payment, and it defaulted to letting PayPal handle the conversion. Fortunately I spotted this and changed it manually before completing the transaction, but when I went through my profile to try and set the default I couldn't find a setting; I'm sure there used to be one.
It seems like somebody's changed the default to the option that brings PayPal the most in charges, regardless of whether or not it's convenient for the customer.
How can I get PayPal to default to having my card handle the conversion every time — like it used to do — without having to manually change the setting on each transaction?
I also need to be sure that my recurring subscriptions will stay as being charged in the foreign currency, as I obviously can't approve a change each month. Although both those companies take credit cards directly, so I can always switch from PayPal on those if necessary.
(This is the same reason I unlinked my bank account; it would always default to paying through my account, and when I changed payment to a credit card I would have to click through a screen saying "are you sure? Think of all the advantages of having the money leave your account right now instead of in a month's time!" Too much hassle to get PayPal to let me use it the way I wanted instead of the way PayPal's beancounters wanted.)
