Unexpected Visa charge on buying Euros

alanwsg

I ordered £1500's worth of Euro through the Post office, paid by Visa Delta card. Everything went fine, I got them the next day so quite impressed.
Three days later I get a £30 "Visa charge" appeared on my account.
I take it that's a 2% charge for the Euros, but I don't really see why I was charged. If I'd drawn the dosh out in sterling and taken it into a post office I wouldn't have been charge so why the charge for effectively transfering money to the post office?

dmg24

This is commonplace. It will be in the product details/ terms and conditions of your debit card.

davetrousers

As above this is common. Once bitten twice shy is the moral of the story.

Why did you get them from the Post Office their rates haven't been very good for a few years now, did you shop around for the best rate?

Incapuppy

davetrousers wrote: »

Why did you get them from the Post Office their rates haven't been very good for a few years now, did you shop around for the best rate?

On the contrary, I have found our local post office to be quite competitive in recent years.

alanwsg

I chose them after looking at the "Travel Money Maximiser" thingy. The Post office were pretty near the top.
To be honest, the rate I got was fine even taking into account the surprise extra charge, it's just a bit annoying as I thought I'd checked everything and still got caught out.
A bit like buying a Ryanair ticket, I suspect.

For future reference, is there a cunning plan to avoid the charge?

davetrousers

alanwsg wrote: »

For future reference, is there a cunning plan to avoid the charge?

Cash!
Wasting characters so my message is long enough

rafter_2

I've started getting my euro's from crown currency, thomas exchange global etc, you norm get a better rate and pay via bank transfer so no fees.

benjus

davetrousers wrote: »

Cash!
Wasting characters so my message is long enough

not so good for buying online...

Obviously you could switch to a bank that doesn't make the charge (e.g. Nationwide, Halifax, or anyone that issues a non-Visa debit card, i.e. Maestro). Of course, if you're switching to Nationwide you wouldn't need to get your cash before you travel, since it's so cheap to use their cards abroad...

Another option is to use a provider that will accept a bank transfer rather than a card payment - the only one I know of is Thomas Exchange (http://www.thomasexchange.co.uk/travel_money_order_form.asp) which I haven't used myself.

Inactive

alanwsg wrote: »

For future reference, is there a cunning plan to avoid the charge?

Use a Maestro Card.;)

Slothy

I believe the Travel Money Maximiser results page has a link to which debit cards charge for purchasing foreign currency.

Been stung by this a few times too, completely unacceptable in my opinion. I got hit by Cahoot for this, they blamed that it was a charge imposed by Visa and they couldn't do anything. Doesn't explain why the Visa debit card for my other bank wasn't charged.