Cheap Travel Money Discussion Area

kush_gupta

QUESTION


Traveling to turkey next month and I am unsure where to buy my Lira. Here in UK and carry it or withdraw from Turkish cash machines?



If buying in UK - recommendations please?


TIA

schiff

Marks & Spencer credit card - buying currency from a M&S Bureau de Change treated as a purchase, and not cash - from 15/11/18

EveryWhere

OceanSound wrote: »

I did see the redflagdeals post you mention. But thats from Feb 2017. So you can't really pin this one on me.
ATM's (actually the one or two ATM's) that don't charge change frequently in Vietnam. e.g. I use to be able to use MB bank ATM's without fee (for Santander Zero card). Then I couldn't use that ATM at all (it wouldn't dispense cash at all with that card). Discovered that SeaBank didn't charge a fee. Same think happened as it did with MB bank, then VPBank..
The same date I made the VIB withdrawal I made 2x withdrawals at Vietcomm bank ATM. They disclosed that there is a fee of 50,000 VND per transaction. I am fine with that because it was stated clearly before withdrawal. You don't hear me moan about that do ya?
VIB didn't tell me. That's nasty!. Anyway, I was going to visit the same ATM now and do a withdrawal while video recording it (so I have the evidence if it goes to Ombudsman), before doing that I gave halifax a call.

They credited my account with £3.00. But what you need to comprehend is, it's not the money. Any fee has to be disclosed before customer agrees to transaction. I always put principle before pounds and pence.

edit: fee needs to be disclosed on screen, not just on receipt. Receipt is often dispensed after the transaction. Coupled by the fact that the paper for the receipts can run out!

Nope....it is the money. I wouldn't waste my precious time over £3.
But I agree the fee should be disclosed on screen and it always has for me.
Good on Halifax for showing goodwill.

londoninvestor

Harrythecat wrote: »

Caxton charges no cash withdrawal fee. Transferwise charges 2 percent (over 200 Euro in any month). I’m guessing that by the time I’ve bought euros from Caxton I’ll have already effectively paid 2 percent so I might as well just take the visible hit on the euros I’ve already got. Am I right?

As a quick data point, a couple of minutes ago Caxton was quoting EUR 1088.25 for GBP 1000. At the same time, Yahoo gave the mid-market rate as 1.1132. So the rate you get from Caxton is 2.2% below the market - more or less in line with your intution.

Sources: Caxton and Yahoo, but of course you'll see slightly different rates whenever you open them.

One thought, maybe get Revolut as well as Transferwise, spread the euros between them, and effectively you've doubled the amount you can get fee-free from ATMs?

OceanSound

londoninvestor wrote: »

As a quick data point, a couple of minutes ago Caxton was quoting EUR 1088.25 for GBP 1000. At the same time, Yahoo gave the mid-market rate as 1.1132. So the rate you get from Caxton is 2.2% below the market - more or less in line with your intution.

Sources: Caxton and Yahoo, but of course you'll see slightly different rates whenever you open them.

One thought, maybe get Revolut as well as Transferwise, spread the euros between them, and effectively you've doubled the amount you can get fee-free from ATMs?

Thank you for quoting your sources. It's a refreshing change to see on these forums.

About trying revolut. hmm. Perhaps!. 90 times out of 100 you may be okay. i.e.The average person may not have any issues (at least for a while), but (and it's a big BUT), when you do, it really sucks. A lot of reports (customer experiences) say they've got too 'big for their shoes'.

Have a look at this:
https://metabubble.net/payment-cards-bank-accounts/revolut-a-victim-of-their-own-success/

The last interaction with Revolut now has been two hours ago, I am still waiting to access my funds and my question to why the account got locked remains unanswered.

THat blog is from 2016, however, I had the same issues 2 months ago!. seems not a lot has changed.

BTW: I'm putting word out so you are aware what to expect. Please don't shoot me!

OceanSound

EveryWhere wrote: »

Nope....it is the money. I wouldn't waste my precious time over £3.

Depends if you are looking out for No.1, or if you genuinely care about the next person.

But I agree the fee should be disclosed on screen and it always has for me.

Lately, I must have used more vietnamese ATM's than I've...made complaints to the ombudsman, and everytime the fee was disclosed, except for those two withdrawals (and that time in Laos two years ago). You may never have come across it in your travels, it doesn't mean the practice doesn't exist. e.g. I've never seen a black swan in real life, but I know they exist.
I find it perturbing at best, shocking at worst that someone could never ever have [STRIKE]used[/STRIKE] seen a VIB Atm, but be so confident that the fee charged was due to the ATM user missing the ATM fee message, because in their experience ATM fee had 'always' been disclosed (when using other ATMs).

Good on Halifax for showing goodwill.

May not be a goodwill gesture in itself. Probably figured that refunding the £3 was more sensible than 'wasting' time dealing with a complaint.

EveryWhere

OceanSound wrote: »

Depends if you are looking out for No.1, or if you genuinely care about the next person.

Lately, I must have used more vietnamese ATM's than I've...made complaints to the ombudsman, and everytime the fee was disclosed, except for those two withdrawals (and that time in Laos two years ago). You may never have come across it in your travels, it doesn't mean the practice doesn't exist. e.g. I've never seen a black swan in real life, but I know they exist.
I find it perturbing at best, shocking at worst that someone could never ever have [STRIKE]used[/STRIKE] seen a VIB Atm, but be so confident that the fee charged was due to the ATM user missing the ATM fee message, because in their experience ATM fee had 'always' been disclosed (when using other ATMs).

May not be a goodwill gesture in itself. Probably figured that refunding the £3 was more sensible than 'wasting' time dealing with a complaint.

You've clearly too much time on your hands. What you write is complete nonsense.

Halifax are in no way responsible for the VIB ATM. So the fact that they gave you £3 was Goodwill on their part.
At the airport I tried every ATM and they all showed the fee beforehand. I meant that I have not withdrawn cash from VIB as they showed a 50k fee.
I already wrote that I made a point of checking most ATMs to find out the fees charged. Personally I only withdrew from fee free ATM.
I certainly never withdrew twice from an ATM that didn't dispense receipts.
Let's draw a line under this. It's boring and nothing to do the Halifax Clarity.
I'm sure people will now take care to only withdraw once from a machine that doesn't dispense receipts. Thanks for the warning.

dj1471

OceanSound wrote: »

I recently withdrew cash using clarity card from ATM in vietnam. ATM didn't tell me there was a fee (or offer me choice to cancel transaction). Later I found that they had added 50,000 VND per transaction for withdrawing 2 x 2,000,000 VND.

I have likewise been a victim of VIB (there's a post on here somewhere), you are correct that they do not inform you of the fee in any way.

It is a breach of the Visa and MasterCard rules as you've found. I see you've got the money back now, but in theory you could have done a partial chargeback of the fee via your card issuer.

For future reference VPBank ATMs are fee-free and widely available.

dj1471

kush_gupta wrote: »

Traveling to turkey next month and I am unsure where to buy my Lira. Here in UK and carry it or withdraw from Turkish cash machines?

Withdraw it there, so long as you have a card that won't charge you or load the exchange rate.

EveryWhere

dj1471 wrote: »

I have likewise been a victim of VIB (there's a post on here somewhere), you are correct that they do not inform you of the fee in any way.

It is a breach of the Visa and MasterCard rules as you've found. I see you've got the money back now, but in theory you could have done a partial chargeback of the fee via your card issuer.

For future reference VPBank ATMs are fee-free and widely available.

Cheeky.

On my first visit, only Vietcombank was fee free at the airport. Apparently now they charge. It's like the game of Whac-A-Mole out there.