or just the ones I use?
So you fill up say 10 Euros - pay with your debit card - they charge you £1.25 - every time.
Robbing, cheating barst@ds!
im fairly sure most banks charge for any kind of currency conversion. You need to get yourself a euro account.
Yes.
One way or the other, you gotta pay.
They all do that,
Easiest way to avoid that is a pre pay credit card - you can get them in Euros so although you’ll still pay when you top it up - you’ll save…
You can use them to buy air tickets with them and avoid the charge the budget airlines make when you pay by cc or debit cards
What bank you with?? Nationwide are meant to be good for getting currency out abroad?? I don’t think they charge anything… don’t quote me on that tho!!
Pretty much all of them do that. The only exceptions that I know of is Nationwide and Abbey (Santander) Zero credit cards… This is the main reason I now use the Abby credit card when I travel… having said that they probably make their money by swinging the exchange rate in their favour.
About 4 years ago I used mu Halifax debit card for everything (hotels, food, fuel etc) whilst biking across Europe for 10 days, and when I got my statement :crazy: about £35 in charges… lesson learnt.
Nationwide forms now filled out and it’ll soon be cheerio! I did offer the guy the chance to refund the money - he told me I was being rude and aggressive - lol. Trust me pal, I was very calm!
Pre paid cards are good, I can recommend Travelex for these - probably because I work for them!
Nationwide are the only ones that don’t charge separately, this was in the Mail last week apparently
I believe that if you are going through Paris you can pop into a credit agricole and open an account for euros with them and not be a French resident, and also have an English speaking branch/helpline.
This may have changed, you may now not have to go to Paris though
i got charged in Barcelona too for using my card, argh it was something ridiculous like 6 euro`s
Hehe… Was you this calm Nick?
yes.
On the nationwide front, they have in the past couple of months gone from “no fees at all” on foreign transactions to 0.84% on some countries (most of europe seems to be free, the US costs though) and I believe it’ll creep up again soon. http://nationwide.co.uk/current_account/foreigntransactions.htm gives you the details, it’s still cheaper than most banks.
Jason
and we can t do without them thats whats annoying, they charge what they want and we can move to another bank but what a pain…biggest legal crooks ever…
This is the cash passport that we do;
https://www.cashpassport.com/buy/JSMain.asp?SiteProducts=na&SiteProductTypes=CP