Releve d'Identite Bancaire question

[lausha]

France Telecom wrote to me saying that I didn't send a RIB with my TIP to pay my bill.  I want to pay it from an English bank account - do you know, can I just send them all the details of that account, or does it have to be a French account?

Thanks

Laura

[Teamedup]

I would say that it should be a french account.

I have never filled in a TIP and always send cheques for my bills, (on french bank accounts)

[Miki]

We have been paying our  FT bills online for a while now, using a

French credit card, not sure if an English one would be acceptable,

perhaps it might ? It was

easy to set up and for those living in the UK, I would think it very

handy ?

[Dotty0]

Yes you can pay by English credit card.  We pay it this way all the time.

Dotty

[Anton Redman]

If you spend two or three days on line with your UK bank's call centre  you should be able to extract from them an IBAN which is the international equivalent of a RIB. If you a very lucky you may then persuade you supplier to input the details but the last time I looked International Direct Debits were seriously expensive to collect ( £ 15 plus a time) and it was a lottery who picked up the bank charges. If anybody has any more up to date information on this I would be interested. Most UK credit cards still 'do you' for 2.5 % on the exchange rate.  

[Teamedup]

I have found that paying FT bills with our debit card is not always possible if we have had dealings with other companies who have put their bill onto our FT bill. FT will only accept payment by card for their part of the bill and a cheque or I suppose TIP for the rest. Too much of a waff on for me and so I send a cheque.

[lausha]

Thanks everyone, very helpful.  I think I may just cave and pay from my French account as I don't want to incur any more charges than necessary.

Cheers

Laura

[andyh4]

The problem is that anyone accepting Visa, Mastercard or other as a means of payment (whether debit or credit) pays that organisation a fee for the priviledge - from memory around 3-3,5% for Visa and Mastercard and up to 5% for Diners/Amex.  So if FT accept other peoples payments on their bill and then accept Visa as payment they get stung for the other parties 3% fees.

[Miki]

[quote user="andyh4"]The problem is that anyone accepting Visa,

Mastercard or other as a means of payment (whether debit or credit)

pays that organisation a fee for the priviledge - from memory around

3-3,5% for Visa and Mastercard and up to 5% for Diners/Amex.  So

if FT accept other peoples payments on their bill and then accept Visa

as payment they get stung for the other parties 3% fees.[/quote]

It is actually less here in France than in the UK for accepting credit

card payments. What is annoying is that we get charged for accepting

debit cards and you can't really  charge a client for a debit card

!! Friends in the UK with machines, were surprised at how much less we

pay than them.

We used to get charged around 0.6% plus around 20 centimes per

transaction (perhaps a little more, haven't got the sheet to hand) and

the cost of calls for the transaction plus any calls to verify paymenst

over a certain amount plus the nightly call totalling all the days

sales. Also in our case, the hire of the machine itself (you can own

them of course). We felt that all in all, it was in the region of just

over 2 % if all charges were taken in to account.

I wonder if FT would get a substantial discount from all the card peeps ?

[Teamedup]

No I didn't mean card charges, I mean other companies like Tiscali putting things on FT bills and FT not accepting other than cheque/TIP payment for the payments of these add ons.

[Dick Smith]

Why not open a French bank account and pay by TIP from that? Then top up the French account from the UK one as necessary, thus incurring far fewer charges.

[lausha]

Thanks all.  In fact, that is exactly what it looks like I'm going to do.  Many thanks for all your help.

Laura