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stuart79

I am looking to send $1200 from my account in the US to my account in the UK. I used SendMoneyHome to find the best rates and setup an account with CurrenciesDirect. The only issue was CurrenciesDirect require me to wire the money to them from the US, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid as it is costly. Then I went back to SendMoneyHome and found xoom.com which offers good rates, but not as good as CurrenciesDirect, but as I registered as a US resident with a US bank account they only charge $4.99 fee, otherwise it is $60. With their exchange rate, I would basically lose £20, so the total fee is about £23.

AshleyECFX

Hello, As you can tell from my name, I work for a foreign currency exchange company, this isn’t for the intention of advertising, but to give genuine inside information. I am going to give you a transparent Insight into the industry, which is a very competitive industry indeed.

I am actually writing a post because it does seem so many people are confused with how, where AND when individuals (and companies) can actually get the unbeatable rates, security, and avoiding fees and charges. Im am talking about transfers from account - account, for example £ account - $ account, Regular small international transfers up to large purchases

Transfer Fee - Banks and some brokers charge same day, TT (telegraphic transfers), CHAPS, unless a BACS payment - 2-3 days free of charge. Banks will charge £15 - £50 a time with 2-3 day international transfers, whilst Brokers can charge £10 TT. However some brokers do not charge the client the fees, they will take it out of their profit, no matter how small the transfer. You can find by you using online or telephone banking, funds will move in a matter of minutes up to 3 hrs via Fast Payment system from UK bank - UK bank, subject to the bank providing FPS and is free of charge. Finding out your daily limit and each transfer limit will benefit you.

Commission - In my personal opinion, in these days charging commission is over charging because banks and brokers make enough profit just by doing the transfer, taking what rate they buy it and sell it to the individual. Most people have caught on and the majority offer 0% commission, But please don’t fall into the trap that this is a special offer, it isnt at all special.

Set Limits - This is a brokers preference, however, you won’t need to look real far for a broker who will not set limits, and still handle with no fees and charges, no matter how small or large the amount.

How do banks/ brokers make money on a trade? - Banks buy and sell using interbank rates, which you can see on-the-spot rates on financial TV channels. Banks will take a set large profit margin, whilst brokers can vary their profit margin, but take a much tighter one. for example, if the Interbank rate for GBP-EUR is at 1.15. Banks will sell to individuals, on average 1.10-1.12, whist brokers will sell around 1.1450-1.13. Brokers will buy their currency from banks and tight spreads from banks at commercial wholesale rates, which can be around 0.002-0.005 off interbank.

When to buy? - Banks won’t tell you, some brokers won’t tell you, but top brokers will guide you with data when it can be a good time to transfer. There are 2 times to trade, at the right time, or at the last minute, which can possibly be a difference of 2 points (a possible example during a matter of days = GBPUSD 1.67 at right time - 1.65 at last minute) on a £100,000 pound transfer, that is $2,000 difference. Make sure your broker cares about when is the right time to transfer. There is a fine line for giving advice though. FSA regulated brokers CAN advice you, non-FSA regulated brokers CANNOT advise you, however they can lay out what is happening in the markets and INTERPRET what will happen, but you make up our own decision.

Financial products - Limit orders, stop losses, forward contracts, can be handy. Your broker will recommend them if they would benefit you. If you want to transfer currency at a later date but like the current rate, forward contracts are useful and 5-10% deposit is required and can last 2 years, depending on the broker. Limit orders and stop losses are used to reduce the risk of missing a target rate (limit order) and rate going below a certain point (stop losses). these two are commonly used if a vital transfer has to be done after the weekend. It is common for brokers to provide a rate alert or a limit order forward option, so when it hit a good rate, they will contact the client, then you have to option to complete the transfer or agree a forward contract.

Security – A very important word in financial services sector. Due to recent turmoil in the banking system many brokers have changed bankers. 100% guaranteed safety and compensation of client funds is ideal. Banks such as Bank of Ireland are protected 100% by the Irish government. Always make sure the account the broker has is a segregated account to separate client funds. All money services Businesses should have a MSB number so you can verify them via HM Customs and Excise, and they will monitored by Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) who work closely with FSA for the prevention of money laundering. So your broker, to open an account will ask for photocopies of ID and address verification as well as sign to agree their Ts and Cs. This would only take minutes on your side. Make sure you find out if their calls are monitored and recorded. You can even ask for the recording of the call to be sent on email to you, just for your peace of mind.

I really people should ask around 2 or 3 different brokers for rates, If you have a rate that is better than the 2nd broker, saying so will only benefit you. It maybe a great idea to get into a Group Booking, but I have only heard of two other companies that provide them. Smaller fx brokers, don’t have the big marketing budgets and big expenses and I have only heard of three companies will actually write 'unbeatable' rates. This doesn’t meant to say smaller to better, because the 'big' fx companies can provide travel money, prepaid currency cards and pay on credit card for example. Some brokers don’t even work on a commission basis. I’m Not!

Regards,
Ashley Ingle
Excel Currencies.
:money:

tmj12

I try to do a comparison on their website for UK Sterling Pound to Malaysian Ringgit and it returns US Dollar result instead!! I've informed them with regard to this issue but so far received no response from them with a week gone by. The phone number on their website goes to answering machine all the time.

I would like to send (transfer) money to my Malaysian bank account now and again to pay for the mortgage but I am finding it difficult to get a company with good rate.

I've tried Foreign Currency Direct and they say they don't deal with Malaysian Ringgit currency. I am now having to resort to using my Natwest bank and it's costing £20 fees plus the £12.50 for receiving it totalling £32.50 a pop which is quite costly. I do this about 4-6 times a year. In addition, the currency rate is substantially lower than the interbank rate.

Can anyone recommed any other options? By the way, I've already read through the Foreign Currency section on moneysavingexpert and would to know what other options do I have as Malaysian Ringgit currency is not one of the major currencies that most companies deal with.

Many thanks in advance.

achan891

I found out about OrbitRemit through the link on this site to sendmoneyhome.org.

I was a bit wary at first but after checking their website, it seems that the New Zealand tax office accepts incoming payments from them, which suggested that they couldn't be too dodgy! Also they have a physical address in the UK which I found reassuring.

I signed up and within a few minutes got a call from someone to check that everything was OK and whether I had any questions. The person I spoke to was very helpful and polite and said that once they received the money at the UK end (which could take 2-3 days depending on the bank), it would be transferred to the payee abroad within 24 hours.

So far, so good. I initiated the transfer (and got an email confirming this had been initiated and they were now awaiting payment ). I then transferred the money to OrbitRemit using my online banking (you just enter their account details and the transfer reference number so they know who it's from). Within about 20 minutes, I had another email from them saying they had received the payment. I then received a third email about 8 hours later saying that the money had been deposited into the overseas account.

It took a little longer than that for the payment to actually be received into the overseas account, but it was still within less than 36 hours of me starting the whole process. I was impressed!

You can only make one transfer of up to £800 without verifying your identity and address, but it sounds like they try to make the verification as easy as possible (I haven't actually done it yet though).

Red_sky

tmj12 wrote: »

I try to do a comparison on their website for UK Sterling Pound to Malaysian Ringgit and it returns US Dollar result instead!! I've informed them with regard to this issue but so far received no response from them with a week gone by. The phone number on their website goes to answering machine all the time.

I would like to send (transfer) money to my Malaysian bank account now and again to pay for the mortgage but I am finding it difficult to get a company with good rate.

I've tried Foreign Currency Direct and they say they don't deal with Malaysian Ringgit currency. I am now having to resort to using my Natwest bank and it's costing £20 fees plus the £12.50 for receiving it totalling £32.50 a pop which is quite costly. I do this about 4-6 times a year. In addition, the currency rate is substantially lower than the interbank rate.

Can anyone recommed any other options? By the way, I've already read through the Foreign Currency section on moneysavingexpert and would to know what other options do I have as Malaysian Ringgit currency is not one of the major currencies that most companies deal with.

Many thanks in advance.

Yes, XE. com seem to be highly recommended on this forum and I recently contacted them and got a very detailed and helpful reply (see forum for FX brokers where I've posted the full reply). The way it works in Vietnam, you send USD to your bank account in Vietnam, withdraw the dollars in cash, then exchange them at the nearest gold shop into Vietnamese Dong where you'll get the best exchange rates much higher than changing USD into Dong at the banks. Not sure if this works in Malaysia for Ringgit but I sure would give it a try or at least find the best way to exchange USD for Ringgit in Malaysia.

Keldin

If anyone is thinking of using moneybookers please do yourself and you money a favour and stop right there. Please avoid these guys at all costs. I fell for thier foreign currency trasfer after finding them on the sendmoneyhome.org comparison site I found via this site. I thought it would be a good idea but it would appear to be a money version of a roach motel - your money checks in but it can never leave.
If I had known weeks ago what I know now or someone had warned me earlier I would have gone an established route and saved myself a lot of stress and a money.

I've been trying to send money to my family in SA for weeks now and all I have succeeded in doing is sending moneybookers a large chunk of cash which I have my doubts I will ever see again.
The sending part is very efficient. However once they have your money trying to actually get your money out again that appears to be impossible.

I set up an account and sent a few hundred pounds to it directly from my bank. It went in within a few hours but perhaps the call from my bank checking that the transaction was a legitimate one should have set some alarm bells off. I only wish I had decided then to stop it before the cash got sent over.
Anyway I allowed the transfer to go through and then sent an email off to my sister as per their instructions. She recived it and opened an account herself and teh money was supposedly placed in her new account. I say supposedly as this is where the 'fun' really begins.
She could withdraw the money (still can't weeks later) or even transfer it back to me. I couldn't send or withdraw money from my newly created account either.
We now faced a series of hoops to jump through before moneybookers will let you do anything with your own money.

I had to verify my address. I have to request a letter be sent with a code which must be entered on their site. Eventually I got this and jumped through this hoop.
I then had to send a copy of my passport and a utility bill to them to prove my address (apparently the letter in the previous step does not prove your address - this is obviously just an additional step to delay you). Jumped through this hoop.
Now I have to verify my bank account (itr seems the fact that they recieved money from it is not enough verification). They provide 2 ways to do this.
I tried method 1 which is they make a 'dummy' (their word) deposit and I must tell them what the code is they used in the deposit info. Tried jumping through this hoop several times but the 'dummy' deposit never gets made.
So I moved on to method 2 which is to get them to take a small amount from my creadit card and I tell them what the amount is. By now I'm wary that this is just a con to get more money but as they already have a lot more of my money locked away from me I decide to make the gamble. But wait no sorry you can't do that because your moneybookers account is locked because you haven't yet successfully jumped through all the other hoops yet.

While all this is going on my sister is trying to get her money (I say 'her money' but it would seem moneybookers is treating it like their own and are not keen to hand it over).
She send them a copy of her South African ID book and a utility bill but hears nothing and her moneybookers account remains locked. I have to call them as they only have an overseas number for her to call which will cost a fortune in international phone rates. It would seem that they haven't bothered to look at their emails for several days and hadn't picked up her submission. Promises that everything will be sorted out.
Meanwhile she is trying to do the bank account verification and has decided to go for option 2 first which is them taking an amount from her account. This hurdle it seems is impossible to overcome and just ends up wiith them taking more money from you. They make a charge against her card but then want her to tell them how much in Euros??? they took out. Except that her account is not in euros since she is in a foreign country!!! So she sees th amount in SA Rands. Not much use there and after a phone call it seem thats just tough and of no use whatsoever.
Meanwhile the first hurdle has been raise deven higher as they don't like here ID as the picture is in black and white. The fact that the ID book only has a black and white picture doesn't seem to drill through their logic (more phone calls for this one) and they also don't like the utility bill as it has her PO Box address not her street address. More phone calls explaining that all her mail goes to a PO Box as in SA most mail gets stolen if it's delivered to your street address. And I also have to point out that teh bill is for her equivalent of council tax and clearly states the address is is for. Hopefully that gets us through that hurdle. More documents sent off just in case and after several more days the first hurdle seems to be behind us.
Now we are taking screen shots of her internet banking page as they don't seem to be able to sort out the privious attempt to tell them how many Euros they took from her card as it doesn't show that. Days go by and finally we seem to be approaching the finish line.

So all excited she logs on to her now supposedly unlocked account weeks later to get her money.

But wait. Whats this? It seems if she tries to withdraw her money it will be process in Euros even though they clearly listed South Africa as one of their countries whiich can do withdrawlel in the local currency. No doubt a way for them to charge more currency exchange fees and commision(they already change my pounds to euros before sending it to her). Biting the bullet and desparate to get her money (or is it moneybookers money - its hard to tell by now) we proceed.
But wait that's not all. Now a black knight steps out and it appears 'none shall pass'.
She cannot withdraw the money to her account as moneybookers 'were unable to verify the data in your profile with an independant information source'. Who wer ethay planning on using to verify further that she is who she says she is and live where she says she lives? Interpol?
And now it seems you have 3 more 'options'. The already tried and failed credit card charge scam.
Sending her a letter (international post - probably get sent surface mail and take 6 weeks)
Or - any this is just brilliant on their part - they can charge her a 'redemptipon fee' to her credit card. I shoudl also point out they are also charging her a cut of the money she wants to withdraw to her bank account.

So far they have charge me to upload money and send it to my sister.
Taken a cut by transferring it in to euros.
Taken a charge from here credit card to unsuccessfully verify her card details
Want to take a cut for allowing her to with draw the money to her account.
Want to charge another fee as all the verification we have already done is no good.

It's our money and we want it back.

Please, please, please do yourselves and your money a favour and don't fall for moneybookers supposedly cheap foreign exchange costs.
Transfer fees - 0.5 euros
Exchange rate - very good
Trying to get you money back out - priceless

K

findtom

Hi,

Oh how I wish I had read the post about earlier!

I have just had a terrible experience trying to move money to Canada and wanted to share it with you.

I used sendmoneyhome.org and it recommend a company called Moneybookers.com as the best company for moving money from the UK to Canada.

So I joined the site and filled in lots (and there are a lot) of forms. In order to send money you need to give them a lot of information and then after you do that (and this isn’t explained at the start) the account is very limited in the amount you can send until you add a bank account and pay them a random sum to prove it is your account and/or send in scans of identity documents.

I didn't have an issue with this as it is fairly common sense but then they wanted me to add my credit card, so I did and they took a small payment form it to again identify it as yours. Now this company has quite a bit of information on me and they want more!!

I then send $700 to my wife in Canada. She created an account (having to also do all the extra things to prove who she was). I had already added my credit card and didn’t think I need to fax them my id docs (and I didn’t want to). Then I got any email from them saying that my account was locked and so was my wife’s as a “standard security check”. I explained that time was a factor and that we need this to happen fast that’s why we chose them.

I opened the account on Wednesday 17 Feb but it took them until Monday 22 to action our information. Then on Monday my wife then began the process of transferring the money into her account. The forms they give you online are a joke and don’t ask for the full swift number (international bank number). So in the confirmation email my wife noticed the bank address was wrong. After emailing moneybookers.com they took 24 hours to respond and even then said “speak to your bank”.

This company is unprofessional, slow and rude. We needed the money to help pay moving fees that we may end up paying higher charges on. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!!

Hope that helps someone else if they need to move money fast and sendmoneyhome.org offers theses idiots!

Tom.

sjcollett

Thank god I have found this thread and thanks for sharing - was about to use moneybookers and now I won't!

competitionscafe

A pity that sendmoneyhome.org are allowing scammers to advertise on their website! (Example scam ad shown below as displayed on sendmoneyhome.org today, 22/09/2010)

sendmoneyhome

Hi,

Your post concerns me a lot as I have not sanctioned this ad to appear on the site and we in no way endorse such products. It would be a big help if you could let me know where the ad appeared I can get to the bottom of this issue. As such, I would like to issue an apology to everyone who may have been shown this and other ads.

Many thanks for your help.

Huw

Director SendMoneyHome.org