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Birmingham Airport . £1 = E.96cents !!!


Frederick

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[quote user="idun"]Why would anyone exchange at an airport. It is possible to get better exchange rates elsewhere.[/quote]Because they are ignorant and stupid is why. Lot's of people do it though, how do you think the Travelex bureaux at most major airports exist, they suck the the punters in with their offers of no commission and buy back deals.

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I went to Prague with a few friends. In France we could not buy czech koruna before leaving, nowhere would sell them to us. I used my card in a bank machine at the airport in Prague, a friend went to a little window in the middle of town and changed euros and got well and truly ripped off.

I had told her not she shouldn't, but she did. And this is someone who is 99.9% of the time very cautious with her money. So yes, people do stupid things.

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Too true. It always makes me laugh when people tell me that there is no commission when they bring their euros back from holiday, no, there is not, just the exchange rate they get takes care of that.

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A friend of mine is a Bank Manager. He says the most expensive way to buy and sell euros is to do it in the UK (or any non euro country). Transporting a few hand fulls of euros about the UK is relatively expensive, so that charge is passed on. Even though they charge you to use your card when out of the country it is still cheaper than buying euros here. As ATM's are quite common in European Airports, Sea Ports and Eurostar destinations, the best thing to do is wait til you get to France and get your money there (and then keep some when you come home so that you've got enough for a snack or toilet when you next go).
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On one of my first ever trip abroad (0ver 30 years ago) the reps were very busy exchanging money on the airport transfers, they were giving a better deal than anywhere else and yet they admitted that they made a very healthy profit and understood why Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple. SIC.
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[quote user="JohnM"]A friend of mine is a Bank Manager. He says the most expensive way to buy and sell euros is to do it in the UK (or any non euro country). Transporting a few hand fulls of euros about the UK is relatively expensive, so that charge is passed on. Even though they charge you to use your card when out of the country it is still cheaper than buying euros here. As ATM's are quite common in European Airports, Sea Ports and Eurostar destinations, the best thing to do is wait til you get to France and get your money there (and then keep some when you come home so that you've got enough for a snack or toilet when you next go).[/quote]

 

Obviously not a Barclays Manager then.

 

I just got my new Bcard and the new T&Cs.

The costs for overseas transactions were somewhat steep.  The costs for withdrawing money at a non Barclay ATM was also rather high and they stressed that these costs were additive.  In total taking money out of a French ATM outside of a major city where there might just be a Barclays will lighten the load by over 5%!!!

 

No wonder the banks are bouncing back - needless to say I will not be availing myself of their services.

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Ouch! No he isn't Barclays he is HSBC. In the light of that I will phone him to ensure that his advice is still the same. I will also ask if it will save me money to have an account with whichever French bank HSBC owns as, I asked once before and he did say that transfers between HSBC banks ought to be cheaper, but he would check and I forgot to chase up the answer.
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My information about HSBC in France, if you are already living here, is that you need to have a substantial sum of money in order for them to be interested in opening an account for you.

Mind you, this is just from personal annecdote, so I am not sure if it's true.

Will be good to have some facts, JM.

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No actually you didn't need to have lots of dosh at one time. The HSBC owned some 'normal' banks too, and we went to one, then they sold it to the Banque Populaire, the bank we left to go to our new bank. Grrrrrrrr

I daresay that they still own the CCF, we went in there and they were not interested in us and our little account.

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Reet nthen, I spoke to my HSBC friend and asked if he still thought the same way about the cheapest way to get euros and he said "yes". So I told him about Barclays and he said "Wow, that's expensive, well it's certainly the cheapest way with HSBC". I then asked about sending money between HSBC's and he said, "Probably not in France as CCF is a commercial bank.... but if you want to open an Hong Kong HSBC bank and a UK one, transfers will be cheaper.... " I hit him.
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Now with Travelex you can order on line and collect at the airport and this is what we used to do.

It was absolutely amazing the difference in rate that we got using this method compared to what was on offer at the counter when we collected. Suppose they can offer terrible rates as they have a captive audience

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