French Banks

[11300]

Hello All,

We have had a second house in France for three years and plan to move out permanently within the next couple of months.

We don't mind paying our way but have been shocked at bank charges in France - we are with Credit Agricole. Perhaps we've been spoiled by inexpensive UK banking. Are all French banks much the same or is there a competitive instinct which benefits customers? Are there government regulations inhibiting competition or standardising charges? Is there a bank out there which any of you would recommend as being courteous, efficient and good value for money?

Any insights or recommendations you can offer would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Rob

[Esperaza]

I have been with CA for 6 years and the only charge that they have ever made on me is the annual one for my Maestro card.

[andyh4]

I have been with CA Alsace Vosges for 3 years and get charged for my mastercard plus 4€20 per month - which compared with the UK may seem a lot, but compared with my German bank charges (last quarter 42€ - after they had credited me with interest on the balance in the account!!) has to be considered a bargain.

 

CA operate on a regional basis and may have different charges for different areas.  If your chharges are significantly higher than those I have quoted, I would check what sort of account you have and maybe change the type of account if you are paying for services you will not need.

[andyh4]

I have been with CA Alsace Vosges for 3 years and get charged for my mastercard plus 4€20 per month - which compared with the UK may seem a lot, but compared with my German bank charges (last quarter 42€ - after they had credited me with interest on the balance in the account!!) has to be considered a bargain.

 

CA operate on a regional basis and may have different charges for different areas.  If your chharges are significantly higher than those I have quoted, I would check what sort of account you have and maybe change the type of account if you are paying for services you will not need.

[ntc]

Hi

I need to open a Credit Agricole account can this be done in English or on line is there a min amount you need to put in per month & what are the charges per month.

thanks in advance if you can help

Norman

[Ron Avery]

Heh Admin/mods

Shouldn't all this lot be in Finance, Isn't this part of the forum supposed to be for useful links not questions about bank charges??????

[derf]

Ron: either you have had one too many, or your computer has gone Tit's up this is in Finance.

[Will]

It is now, I moved it from 'useful links' after Ron requested it in another part of the forum. I suppose I should have deleted his post above - sorry.

[Ron Avery]

[quote]Ron: either you have had one too many, or your computer has gone Tit's up this is in Finance.[/quote]

Neither and both Les

This thread was in Useful Links until Will moved it this morning following my post.

 

I''ll delete my message above and then perhaps you can delete yours............. other wise it will look really odd.

[Will]

...but then I'll have to delete mine as well

I vote we let them stay, there are plenty of other messages elsewhere I'd rather delete

[Gyn_Paul]

No... let them all stay.. It reads like the two deaf old codgers:

"Windy today,"

"No, that was yesterday, It's Thursday."

"Yes, so am I, lets go and get a drink."

 

paul

[derf]

That's Ok leave it as is, I knew what the score was, i were havin a joke, will try and do better next time (pardon what was that): rolleyes: 

[11300]

Thanks so much for the comments. I shall scrutinize the charges in the light of your advice.

I must say, you seem like a friendly and very responsive bunch. In the future, I shall try to be more careful about posting categories.

Rob

[Will]

[quote]Hi I need to open a Credit Agricole account can this be done in English or on line is there a min amount you need to put in per month & what are the charges per month. thanks in advance if you ...[/quote]

Glad you were able to find some useful information. There is a lot of other stuff that you should find of interest about French banks elsewhere in the 'finance' section. The one golden rule is that because France is a large and diverse country, there are hardly any standard answers.

In answer to Norman's question, it sounds as if you need a Britline account (http://www.britline.com). I have no personal experince of these so don't know about the charges (this page might help - http://www.britline.com/g1/banking_info.htm). We get the impression from other forum users that opening the account provides, shall we say, a useful introduction to French bureaucracy. And although it is an English-speaking service, the statements etc are all in French (probably to comply with a French law).

[bryansmith]

We opened a Credit Agricole account in Perigueux last September. The only charges we have seen so far were for the cards for my wife and myself.

The only down side (as we travel about France occasionally) is that each CA bank is independent of the others -  we can only pay in at Perigueux for instance. Not too much of a problem but we thought in our innocence that CA was a nationwide bank like the ones in the UK.

We have received regular statements although we are still in the UK at the moment, and are very pleased with the service from CA

[Ron Avery]

[quote]We opened a Credit Agricole account in Perigueux last September. The only charges we have seen so far were for the cards for my wife and myself. The only down side (as we travel about France occasion...[/quote]

So Bryan,  you do not get a little item on your statement like the one below each month then?.

01/07

Forfait Compte Service

- 5,65

I do get a 600€ overdraft with this account but am charged interest if I use it and I got charged 36.50€ for my eurocard by midi pyrenees,  how much did Perigueux charge you for yours

No wonder the French stick with a cheque book

[Gyn_Paul]

Ron,

I had my CA account for 10 years with just the charges for the renewal of the debit card for my wife and me, every 2 years. Then a few months ago I asked for and got an overdraft and was granted a facility of E150.00 Wow! For this princely facility I get charged a monthly E3.50 regardless of whether I ever go into the red or not.

Contrast with the UK where I have a £2,000 overdraft on my Lloyds account which costs nothing.

 

p 

[11300]

[quote]We opened a Credit Agricole account in Perigueux last September. The only charges we have seen so far were for the cards for my wife and myself. The only down side (as we travel about France occasion...[/quote]

 

Hi Bryan,

We were on holiday in 64 and were able to pay money into our CA Midi account, with a little help from the guy at the Acceuil desk.

I might be worth trying again.

Best of luck,

Rob

[Gyn_Paul]

Oh yes, it's perfectly possible to pay into a not-your Credit Agricole; just not easy.

My home branch is Credit Agricole Atlantique Vendee. To pay into one of their branches I simply fill in a deposit envelope, stuff the cash in, and post it into the night safe thingy in the wall in the lobby. Done.

To pay into Credit Agricole Centre (say) I need to go to the desk, queue, explain what I want to do, wait while the cashier fills in a form laboriously copying the bank IBAN details, copies the details from my passport, enquires where the cash came from, (Thanks, US money-laundering regulations!), counts the cash, prints out the receipt and gets me to sign a copy. All up about 12-15 minutes.

p

 

[Ron Avery]

[quote]Oh yes, it's perfectly possible to pay into a not-your Credit Agricole; just not easy . My home branch is Credit Agricole Atlantique Vendee. To pay into one of their branches I simply fill in a de...[/quote]

Not so odd P, last time I was in London,  I tried paying money into a Barclays account at the nearest bank which happened to be an HSBC as I had always done, but NOT NOW I just got directed to the nearest Barclays

I asked in Barclays how long it had not been possible to pay money in at other banks and they said quite some time, and if I had wanted to pay money into an HSBC account, they would have directed m to th nearest HSBC, they don't even have the forms for paying into other banks anymore.

[Polremy]

hey - we dont pay any charges!! we have lived here for 3 years and before that this was our holiday house. each month we transfer 200euros into our banque populair account to cover standing orders for internet, phone, electricity and water. we do this my withdrawing from the hole in the wall - nationwide flex account - and literally handing over the euros in the bank. they dont like it but it has worked so far.

we use our nationwide credit card for all day to day expenses - [petrol, supermarket, car service and so on. we draw out cash from hole in the wall to pay incidental once a year costs such as insurances and taxe d'habitation.

our day to day cash is also drawn from hole in the wall - nationwide make no commission charges.

we run a tight ship!!

[Gyn_Paul]

I think it's called 'progress': makes life easier for the fonctionaires, and harder for the customers. I'm surprised that Barclays didn't tell you that it was 'a new feature of the terms and conditions' and that it was all for greater 'customer convenience' !

 

paul

[Debra]

Hi,

We saw the property we wanted to buy in June and since the exchange rates were good, decided to convert the money we had to buy it into Euros then.  We arranged this with a money broker, thinking we'd just open a HSBC euro account to put the money into (I know, silly us). 

First shock was that this would take a week at our local branch (minimum) and also that they charged to run the account, receive money and pay out.  I then tried Barclays (the only other bank in our village) who also took at least a week to open a UK based Euro account, but more likely 10 days, also had similar yearly charges but who took 2% of each transaction, in or out.  Obviously this is prohibitive when you're talking enough money to buy your house with.  So, UK Euro account: totally inappropriate.

The lady in Barclays told me to ask the lady in the local chemist, since she had a French property and had already done all this.  This lady directed me to Britline, which she had and said could be opened quickly online (money already on the way so we needed it quickly) and it was easy to do because it could all be done in English.  I looked into this, to find that although you could apply online there was a lot of paperwork back and forth which had to be done via the post and that it would take 15-20 days to open an account.  There were also a lot of bank charges to be paid, inlcuding a regular amount to operate the account.  The time constraint meant we couldn't consider this anyway.

Next we phoned Credit Agricole in London and asked them how we could open a French Euro account quickly.  Go to France!  Can be done quickly - in an hour.  The guy told us what to take with us and gave us the number of the manager of the Calais branch (cheapest ferry at the time) and so, after only just coming back (kicking ourselves for not making the time to open an account while we were there viewing properties), we drove down to do Dover to Calais to make our appointment with the Calais Lafayette branch of CA.  Between our pidgin French and the manager's pidgin English, we opened an account within an hour as promised.  We were told there would be no charges to pay in or withdraw, a €33 charge for a credit card (which we decided to get after having had problems getting petrol late at night with our 'invalide' credit cards at the auto fill stations), unless we paid in foreign currency.

We made two transfers to the account within 10 days and were charged €9 for the larger amount and €9.18 for the smaller amount (no rhyme or reason to this, we thought!) but after an email to the manager reminding him he had told us there would be no charges, we got these charges refunded.

The only negative we've had is that they won't post the card (and maybe cheque book, as though promised thru the post it hasn't arrived yet) like they do from UK banks.  This means we'll have to make sure we go via or nearby Calais to collect them next time we come over.  He recommended we change branches once we have completed on our house purchase, but we figure if we use the card to pay for things the cash withdrawal limit between branches won't really affect us so if we aren't likely to receive the same level of service from the local branch we'll just stay with this one (which he said was ok with him if it was ok with us).

Debra

[Debra]

Forgot to mention they also have internet banking.  We were charged €0.50 for this but we're not actually sure if this is a one off sign up fee, a monthly fee or for each time we use it (if it is we've signed on a few times now and don't seem to have been charged again yet, but they may just be slow!) - but it seemed worth it to be able to check what was happening with our transfers and communicate via email without having to struggle in French on the phone.

[BJSLIV]

we'll just stay with this one

You may welll have a difficult decision to make, unless your house is near to Calais. Why?

Because even though the Credit Agricole is one bank, it still operates on a strictly regional basis, which is how it was until privatised. As a result you may well have difficulties and delays trying to operate your account through a  CA branch in your region.

Transferring your account may also require you to open a completely new account so don't set up too many standing orders just yet........

 

PS 9.19 euros is their standard charge to receive amounts over 12500 euros. They also charge .50 euros each time you log on to the account via the net. Its all listed in their tarrif.