UK to Europe Bank Transfer Charges

bristolboy25

I currently purchase some goods from Germany which I sell online, anyhow I always paid by credit card until now as the manufactuer wants 30 day terms on all now and I have to pay by bank transfer.

My question is how can I do this cheapest way?, as I am with Abbey National and they charge around £30 to do this and you can't seem to do it online for free as you can with other payments.

Is there a way this can be done cheap, the bank in question they use is postbank in Germany.

Any help appreciated.

innovate

If you need to do this regularly, undoubtedly the cheapest solution would be your own free Internet Euro account, which you then can load with Moneybookers for a flat £1.30 charge per transaction (loading money into Moneybookers is free of charge). Then you do a free transfer from your bank account to your supplier's.

The tricky bit is how to get hold of a free internet Euro account - you usually have to be a resident, or at least have an address, in Euroland (could be Ireland, for instance, or in any country which uses Euro currency). You can get Euro accounts in the UK (e.g. with Citibank) as well but I find they all have some prohibitive restriction or other.

Try your luck with Britline - I know quite a few Brits use them and they seem to be ok - though I am not sure their banking is free.

May be your supplier would agree on a compromise where both of you have a Moneybookers account? You could pay them, say, an additional £5 with each transaction to cover their withdrawal fee & effort to transfer your money manually? I am sure the reason they want bank transfers is to stop paying credit card fees, and if you offer them a no-cost way they will surely want to keep your business?

I use Moneybookers myself for transfers to a german account I have - exchange rates are quite good, and their fee obviously beats the banks hands down, but you need to allow about 5-7 working days for a transaction to complete.