Travellers cheques

Others please feel free to correct anything I have said below:

For information about Travellers Cheques see:
http://www.americanexpress.com/uk/tc/index.shtml and
http://www.visaeurope.com/iwantvisa/travellerscheques.html

Re Commission: some people will charge you a commission for buying currency from them (be it in the form of hard notes or TC's), it will normally be a percentage of the amount of currency bought.

Many currency exchanges do not charge commission anymore. However the exchange rates they will offer you do vary. You will probably find the likes of Travelex (online purchase), M&S and the post office to be pretty competitive (in that order).

The rate that all of the above be less than the "bank" rate, this is where some of their money is made.

From personal experience you would probably be best to take American Express TC's to Thailand, as they will be more acceptable. Visa TC's are also pretty acceptable. If you do decide to take TC's take larger notes (i.e. US$100) because in Thailand there will be a charge for EACH TC you exchange into Thai Baht. In terms of currency: US$, UK£ and € are all widely recognised.

Have a look at this article about spending abroad: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1106765397,71685,

Basically if you can get hold of a Nationwide FlexAccount and credit card you will save a load of money. In terms of using debit and credit cards in Thailand you should not have any problems.

Read with interest the other notes on this thread - Mr Loobeylou and I are off to Southern Spain later in the year.

We are presuming that we will take sterling travellers cheques so that we can exchange them back easily at this end if we have any left over, and take our chances on the currency exchange whilst on holiday - you can usually look around the banks out there for the best rate.

We will then have the backup of our debit card, with credit cards as a last resort. We are hoping we don't have to use the credit cards too much, as we don't have the Nationwide account.

Does anyone disagree with this scenario, and for what reasons?

We took euro travellers cheques (american express) to Spain, and never will again. We had huge problems cashing them in a bank - as they don't make anything on the exchange rate or on commission. We could have cashed them in the hotel, but the charges almost amounted to 10%. When I rang the AE customer services number to find somewhere, (call center was in Manila) they suggested I go to offices 80 miles away, and had no idea of the geography of Spain. Took sterling tc's to Africa, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey last year - no problems, good exchange rate. I wouldn't bother buying dollar tc's as you lose on exchange rates twice.
One thing to remember, is that you need to carry your passport to exchange tc's - in some place this is best avoided and a card is much easier to keep safe. I've recently opened a Nationwide account purely for the benefit of their debit card when travelling.

Many thanks for those who have responded - the Post Office advised me today that they charge one and a half percent to do sterling traveller's cheques, and presumably you then get charged at the other end again!

Does anyone know, is there a way of doing it so you don't get charged twice - silly question I know, as they will all take their cut. The PO were trying to get me to consider taking euro traveller's cheques.

Unless I have got this wrong, I was led to understand that the Nationwide, excellent though their card is for foreign holiday transactions, need you to open an account and have £1000 going through the account monthly, and it hardly seems worth all the hassle in transferring from the Halifax plus changing all the standing orders and direct debits.

Any ideas?