Banking matters

Hi every one,

I will like to ask a question... I am a Singaporean and I am currently working in Amsterdam. Last month I used my DBS visa credit card to pay for some bills in Amsterdam. My intention was to pay the bills using money from my DBS current account in Singapore. I thought I would not incur any administrative fee and would only need to pay for the amount after conversion into euros (using the rates quoted by the bank). To my great dismay, this was not the case. I wrote in to enquire more and this was the reply from DBS -

"An administrative fee for services provided or actions taken by us in relation to such foreign currency transactions shall be payable by the account holder and debited to the Card Account. The prevailing administrative fee is 1.5% of the foreign currency transaction amount for transactions involving VISA International."

"Transactions in foreign currency other than US Dollars will be converted into US dollars before being converted into Singapore dollars."

I find it ridiculous that I have to pay an additional 1.5% administrative fee when I use the card outside of Singapore and this conversion merry-go-round does not make sense. Can some one kindly advise me if this is standard practice in other banks? (Example: OCBC, UOB, Citibank, HSBC etc).

Thanks and best regards