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Refunding deposits to Non Euros guests.


Quillan
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Somebody phoned me to day to pick my brains on PayPal and I sugested they ask this question on the forum but they haven't. It does interest me as I am curious and may help others.

How do Gite owners refund the deposit to people from outside the Euros Zone and do their guests complain about the banking costs should the money be transfered bank to bank and if so what do you do or say?

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Are you talking about breakage deposit? When we holidayed in France if it was a British owned gite we often offered a UK cheque-which the owner held on to until the end of the stay. Then if we had damaged or broken anything (didn't happen often) they returned the cheque to us and we paid them in euros.We then destroyed the cheque.
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Idem.

Six of us stayed in a large french owned gite for two weeks, previously the residence of a vigneron, situated in the Aude.

The caution for the period was € 1500, the gite owner was quite happy with a cheque on a UK bank for £ 1500.

At the end of the holiday a quick wander round the property with the owner and recovered the cheque.

No damage so no need for euros.

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Reading my post again perhaps I didn't get it right. How does a person with access to ONLY a French Euro checking account deal with damage deposits from non Euro countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia (as examples) and refunding them..
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I believe Q, that if you pay via Paypal and the transaction is reversed as in a non sale then there are no fees to pay. This is only providing it is reversed within a certain time frame maybe 14 days. Reading the text on Paypal to find out is something I must do but haven't had the time.
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  • 3 weeks later...

There are different ways of sending PayPal payments; different rules and fees apply according to whether they are personal payments, payments for services or payments for goods.

If someone sends a payment for services or goods, fees apply (can't remember off the top of my head but it's approx 30p plus around 4%). There's also a 'cross-border' fee if it's between two different currencies, and not very good exchange rates. If you refund, the percentile is refunded, but not the standing fee of 30p (this latter came into effect a couple of months ago - before that the payment would be refunded in full).

For personal payments (strictly speaking for family and friends) there's a small fee which can be paid by the sender or recipient.

You can refund up to sixty days after the original payment by finding the transaction, clicking on 'details' - the 'refund' link is there.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Re paypal payments to/from family and friends - please Jo can you point me to where you found this on the paypal website as neither I nor my daughter can find it!

I find it useful to send her money (to Germany from France so all in euros) for birthday or Christmas etc via paypal but we have been doing it by her "billing" me for "goods" and her paying a % and a small fee to paypal to receive it.,

If we can do it more cheaply that would be great.

Many thanks

Mrs H

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[quote user="Hereford"]Re paypal payments to/from family and friends - please Jo can you point me to where you found this on the paypal website as neither I nor my daughter can find it!

I find it useful to send her money (to Germany from France so all in euros) for birthday or Christmas etc via paypal but we have been doing it by her "billing" me for "goods" and her paying a % and a small fee to paypal to receive it.,

If we can do it more cheaply that would be great.[/quote]

If you and your daughter have Euro-denominated bank accounts (eg in France and Germany), can't you do a free electronic virement online from your French bank? SocGen and Boursorama certainly can, and I'd be surprised if others can't or if they charge for this.

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[quote user="Hereford"]Re paypal payments to/from family and friends - please Jo can you point me to where you found this on the paypal website as neither I nor my daughter can find it!

I find it useful to send her money (to Germany from France so all in euros) for birthday or Christmas etc via paypal but we have been doing it by her "billing" me for "goods" and her paying a % and a small fee to paypal to receive it.,

If we can do it more cheaply that would be great.

Many thanks

Mrs H

[/quote]

For the UK site it's here https://www.paypal-marketing.co.uk/sendmoney/index.htm

costs are as follows

  • Sending international payments from your PayPal

    balance or bank account is charged at 3.9% plus 20p for currency

    conversion, about a third of what you'd pay with other transfer

    providers
  • A recent survey found PayPal to be the cheapest method for sending money abroad*.

For example, compare the following rates for sending £100 overseas:

Barclays

£25.00

MoneyGram International

£12.50

Western Union

£9.80

PayPal

£4.10

I think Pickles idea is probably better?

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Thanks Alex, yes the amounts (approx) are what my daughter paid but Jo suggested something rather cheaper was available for family.

Pickles:  I shall ask Credit Agricole if I can make an online virement to her.   For Christmas 2010 I went into CA and they did it for me but, of course, charged. If I can do it myself then brilliant - but CA are notoriously behind the times!!

Thanks for help

Mrs H

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If you log into your PayPal account, then click on "send money" on the top line.

On the new page which opens up, about half way down there are two boxes one is "purchase" and the one to the right of it is "personal".

Click on personal,  new page opens.

Enter the email address of who you wish to send payment.  Tick the box that says "gift", then continue.

On the next page you will see the fee if sent from one UK account to another UK account is 0.00.

If the payment is for an overseas account there is a small fee, which the sender can pay or the person receiving payment can have the fee deducted from the total sent.

If a preson sends a payment request, it cannot be a personal payment.

You must send the payment direct to be able to do this, the receiving party cannot request a "personal payment".

Hope this helps.

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[quote user="Hereford"]Pickles:  I shall ask Credit Agricole if I can make an online virement to her.   For Christmas 2010 I went into CA and they did it for me but, of course, charged. If I can do it myself then brilliant - but CA are notoriously behind the times!![/quote]

The CA website seems to indicate that you can get online access to your account  - this might be the way forward. There MAY be a small charge for virement to a non-CA bank account, but this charge will be the same for a transfer to any non-French Euro bank account as it would be to any non-CA French bank account.

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Re paypal payments to/from family and friends - please Jo can you point me to where you found this on the paypal website as neither I nor my daughter can find it!

As above - beat me to it!

Just an addendum - and a bit off-topic - you shouldn't use this for goods as there's no seller or buyer protection attached.


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We've used our branch of CA to do virements for various payments for about 4 years, with no problems. CA isn't the same everywhere of course, but with our branch it was very straightforward to set up online, and there are several steps when doing a transfer when you can check it's correct. I did one to/for the IBAN number of the management company of our apartment block on Tuesday evening, had an automatic email within a couple of minutes, and had another email this morning to say ithe transfer had happened. All easy and efficient.

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Hi again

I think gardengirl you are talking about a payment from a French bank acc to another French one, whereas I need to transfer to an account in Germany.

Anyway, my daughter says you can't seem to do family/friends paypal version from Germany but it certainly works from France. Cost to me was 1.30 euros.

Thanks for all the help and advice.  She now has her birthday money!

Mrs H.

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[quote user="Hereford"]I think gardengirl you are talking about a payment from a French bank acc to another French one, whereas I need to transfer to an account in Germany.[/quote]

You've evidently solved your problem for the time being but for future reference, GG is correct: there should be no more difficulty with making a Eurozone, Euro-denominated payment from a French bank than making a French bank to French bank payment: the key term to use is "SEPA", (Single European Payments Area) and under rules that apply across the Eurozone, the cost to send money to a Eurozone, Euro-denominated bank account outside France has to be the same as they would charge to send to a different French bank. This works for payments up to €50K. Some individual branch staff may not be aware - if it is not a procedure that they have come across before then they may be in the dark. If you have online access to your account you may find that it is able to make Eurozone virements in the same way as it makes virements of a different French bank.

[quote user="Hereford"]She now has her birthday money![/quote]

At least you are now sorted for this year!

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Thanks Pickles - will certainly follow this up, our rural branch not at all with it and even told me some time ago that French to French bank account virements would not be "understood" by the recipient... I gave up trying to do other than transfers to/from our own accounts. However will try to sort this before any more birthdays.

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As someone who regularly does this the other way round - Germany to France - I can confirm that it works well and is cheap.

However I do know that French banks are retiscent about transfers (they are standard in Germany and we have no cheque books any more).  You just have to go armed with the BIC and IBAN of the recipient and insist that they do it.

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This bit about Euros's being sent between Eurozone countries not being charged anymore than moving money 'across the road' has been around for years now (at least three). As an EBay buyer and seller I often send and receive direct payment via my bank. The most I have ever been charged is five Euros, normally it's around the three Euros mark. I thought this more recent business mentioned about charges was more to do with none Eurozone countries which are part of the EU. Certainly it's cost me around five Euros to sent money to my daughter in the UK. Personally I think even three Euros (or there abouts) is a bit much considering it takes them all of two minutes maximum to bash it in the computer.
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I think the cost is partly down to usage rates Q.  I pay 55c for a transfer in Germany - where it is standard to make transfers - but 2,50€ with CA in France to do the same thing.

 

The problem (as always) with making transfers outside of your currency zone, is that, on top of the transfer fee, there will always be an exchange rate issue and exchange charge to add on top. 

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