euros, pounds, moneybookers and confusion

larry_lurex

hello all, i have finally given up my lurking existence.

here's the scenario, any input gratefully received:

i have a euro current account in europe and i would like to transfer funds into one of my uk pound current accounts.

in the past i have simply used a money transfer but i remember being charged by both banks for the privilege.

this time i want to avoid charges as much as possible so i have signed up with moneybookers.com. however my account with them is in pounds and the account they tell me to transfer the euros to is a uk one. this makes me think that i will incurr charges by making a transfer and i might end up paying more by using the additional moneybookers step.

does anyone have experience with this kind of thing ? i've read through the moneybookers help but it's not very helpful. similarly i have read through several bank sites but they are keeping the charges for money transfers a state secret.

innovate

Only done this the other way round - from UK current account to a Euro current account abroad. My Moneybookers is in £. I would expect it's basically the same if you do it the other way round

• Loading money into Moneybookers is free (though takes 3-5 working days from UK bank)
• withdrawing money into Euro account costs a flat €1.80 (roughly £1.30)
• the money arrives in the Euro account in 2-3 working days
• the exchange rates always looked very decent [max plus/minus 0.015 variance to the published ECB rate]. I never had a direct comparison with rates banks would have used on the same dates, but when I used banks before, the exchange rate was several pence off the ECB rate

Hope this helps

EDITED: from all I understand, it should be transparent to both the banks that Moneybookers do a currency conversion. As long as your banks allow you to do free bank transfers, you should therefore not incur any additional charges by either or both of your banks. May be try things out for yourself with a tenner before you do a larger transfers.

innovate

Just remembered, there is a thread on an eBay forum about transferring Euros to a UK bank by bank transfer - - I think it might be worthwile if you trawl through that thread because you might be able to do the whole thing without Moneybookers and not get charged any fees, depending on which bank(s) you are dealing with.

Would be great if you could report back what you concluded :cool:

innovate

Actually............just went into my Moneybookers and looked at how I would load money from my Euro account. I can only do this by bank transfer to the Moneybooker's Lloyds account in London!

So unless your Moneybookers account is registered somewhere in Euroland (which it probably isn't), it doesn't appear that Moneybookers can sensibly be used for transferring money from a person's foreign account to the same person's UK account! You can as well transfer the money straight to your UK account, without going via the Lloyds Moneybooker account.

In your case, I'd pursue the options described in the eBay thread. Good luck!

larry_lurex

many thanks for the advice. i've read through the ebay thread and that's what i'm gonna try.

sending euros to a uk pound bank account via moneybookers is quite different to sending pounds to europe. careful, children.

i will do what's recommended - send euros with charges shared (between me and myself, irene is not involved).

thanks again for your effort. i promise i will report back.

innovate

larry_lurex wrote:

sending euros to a uk pound bank account via moneybookers is quite different to sending pounds to europe. careful, children.

Thanks Dad :rotfl: !

You are very right, there's a big difference (as I have only just found out, thanks to your posting) - I had naively assumed that sending money from X (= UK) to Y (= Euroland) via Z (= Moneybookers) is the same as sending money from Y to X via Z. Especially since both X and Y are, in this case, members of one and the same economic union, and Z is 'a constant'.

May be if I dye my hair a different colour, I'll understand the difference? But quite likely that wouldn't help explain things, either.

Thanks for raising this matter, larry lurex, hope you can confirm that a bank transfer "a-la-eBay" is actually working for you as well! And economically so.

I have, btw, sent an email to Moneybookers asking how I do a "Y to X" transfer as a UK resident who can happily do "X to Y" transfers, and who - like all Moneybooker customers - isn't allowed more than one account. They usually take a few days to respond, when they do, I'll update this post.

larry_lurex

you've actually found the solution to the moneybookers conondrum: allow an individual two accounts.

but then i would send money to myself practically free of charge via two bank transfers and the beloved bookerinos would take the hit.

it's actually easy to do if you have a good friend in euroland. just a thought, not encouraging anything ...

innovate

larry_lurex wrote:

you've actually found the solution to the moneybookers conondrum: allow an individual two accounts.

Sure, it's dead straight forward, for honest souls like you and I - but the likes of Moneybookers have to cater for money launderers, so a one-account-per-person rule as the default seems a sensible measure. I hope they are able to make exceptions for 'confirmed honest punters'', but if they insist on their rule, I will understand - they still offer massively better rates for transferring money out of the UK than anyone else I have come across so far.

larry_lurex wrote:

but then i would send money to myself practically free of charge via two bank transfers and the beloved bookerinos would take the hit.

Long live the £ because it keeps bookerinos (and bankerinos) swimming at the top of the money (/honey) pot. Why should the likes of you and I be able to do what those frogs and krauts and their likes can do - - trading freely across this thing called European Economic Union, without incurring punitive bank charges? We would make life so much more difficult for those poor bankers if we didn't pay them premium rates for simple transactions like buying something in Belgium, Holland, Spain etc......

larry_lurex wrote:

it's actually easy to do if you have a good friend in euroland. just a thought, not encouraging anything ...

It's always good to have friends :grouphug: :grouphug:.

innovate

I contacted Moneybookers with the question on how to deposit money from a non-UK bank account into my Moneybookers account, held in the UK.

It's actually dead straight forward - they have bank accounts in all the countries they support. Therefore you can do an "in-country" bank transfer from your foreign account to the respective Moneybookers account, in just the same way you transfer money into their UK Lloyds account. Such a transfer is likely to be free of charge in 'euroland', and if your foreign account is an Internet account, you can do the transfer from anywhere.

You just have to write to Moneybookers and ask for the details of their bank account in the given country. They will take their time to respond, but they do, eventually....

larry_lurex

here's the result of the experiment:

i used (important, as pointed out on ebay thread) an 'eu standard transfer'. rules are that currency has to be euros, bic and iban codes have to be right and charges have to be shared between sender and recipient (this is the only option for this type of transfer anyway).

in short - no human involvement necessary, everything is done electronically.

the result:
the euro account charged ... nothing.
the pound account charged ... nothing. exchange rate was 1.48 though (i just checked it's currently 1.46).

so all in all a success, a good way to directly transfer euros (sent them monday, arrived today) without moneybookers etc.

citibank still made a few pound due to the exchange rate but it was worth a try. i've paid much more in charges in years gone by so here's to european directives (be they about straight bananas or bank transfers).

thanks for your valuable input, much appreciated.