jackmary Posted January 24, 2003 Share Posted January 24, 2003 Hi First time for us Bought farmhouse Nr Lannion Brittany.First shock before even getting to France we arranged telegraphic transfer of funds with our bank Abbey National.The rate at the time of transfer was 1.52 but Abbey National Global and Electronic payments only gave us 1.5091.We were only told there would be a fee of 25 but the difference in the exchange rate cost us 340.Were we mugged or is this the norm? Many thanks JackMary Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richardbk Posted January 24, 2003 Share Posted January 24, 2003 .The rate at the time >of transfer was 1.52 but Which rate was this.You will never get the official quoted rate and for smallish private transactions it is quite normal to be 2 or 3 base points of the quoted rate of the day. When you tranfer you can usually ask them to quote and fix (spot forward) the rate for the time of the transfer. If not the rate used will be that 3-4 days from initiating the transer. I.e the point at which they exchange the currency. The 25GBP just pays for standard transfer fee, irrespective of the actual rate used.Of course the whole process is a con, and there is really no reason why a transfer can not be made in <12 hours at or close to the rate of the day. Unfortunately this is only going to come about through stronger European regulation.regsRichard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penny29 Posted January 26, 2003 Share Posted January 26, 2003 The very word Abbey national makes me grind my teeth and I would NEVER EVER recommend them to anyone. I won't go into details on this forum but we have had the most abysmal service from thme over the last 6 months, their customer service people are rude and inefficient and we have ended up with an official complaint to the Ombudsman. I would say bank with anyone rather than the Abbey, as when they make mistakes they simply don't give a damn.Phew - that's that off my chest!!!!Penny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Gandy Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Hello AllJust for the record we got caught out by the abbey too, to the tune of about 250. I wrote a letter to them and they wrote back with an excuse so I wrote a stinking nasty letter telling them that they were a typical bank and didn't give a sh*t about the normal hard working person and if it wasn't for people like me they wouldn't have a bank and they very nicely credited my account with 250.Give 'em hell. Never take no for an answer. The best form of defense is attack.P.S I hate banks.Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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