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Misleading Advice on "Cheap Travel Money" page
Will_Fisher
Posts: 1 Newbie
My girlfriend (who is a big fan of this site) followed the advice from the Cheap Travel Money page (and got a travelex cash passport). Unfortunatly, I think it provides misleading advice for following reason:
My HSBC plus debit and HSBC credit card are subject to a 2.75% load as the site correctly states, however this is 2.75% from the mid-rate which you can view eg on google finance by searching for GBPUSD (I've reconciled this almost exactly from my credit card bills following a holiday to the US we took last week).
This is rated this as "bad", because I'm getting charged 2.75%.
The TravelEx Cash Passport is rated as "good" because it has a 0% load from travelex's rates. However, travelex's rates are always at least 3% away from the mid-rate! You can check this simply by looking at the bbc news currency data (in News -> Business -> Market Data -> Currencies)
Just take the difference between the rates on the main page and the rates on the "travel money" page which has prices from travelex. You'll find that they're ALWAYS worse than the 2.75% loading on a HSBC card!
I think this should be pointed out on the site. A proper analysis of the differences between different "own rates" is needed to properly compare ways to spend abroad. For example, is the post office credit cards "0% loading" based from the mid rate or the post offices own travel money rate? If it's the former, it's an excellent deal (you're getting an fx rate better than wholesale currency dealers!), if it's the latter it's likely to be worse than my HSBC credit card.
My HSBC plus debit and HSBC credit card are subject to a 2.75% load as the site correctly states, however this is 2.75% from the mid-rate which you can view eg on google finance by searching for GBPUSD (I've reconciled this almost exactly from my credit card bills following a holiday to the US we took last week).
This is rated this as "bad", because I'm getting charged 2.75%.
The TravelEx Cash Passport is rated as "good" because it has a 0% load from travelex's rates. However, travelex's rates are always at least 3% away from the mid-rate! You can check this simply by looking at the bbc news currency data (in News -> Business -> Market Data -> Currencies)
Just take the difference between the rates on the main page and the rates on the "travel money" page which has prices from travelex. You'll find that they're ALWAYS worse than the 2.75% loading on a HSBC card!
I think this should be pointed out on the site. A proper analysis of the differences between different "own rates" is needed to properly compare ways to spend abroad. For example, is the post office credit cards "0% loading" based from the mid rate or the post offices own travel money rate? If it's the former, it's an excellent deal (you're getting an fx rate better than wholesale currency dealers!), if it's the latter it's likely to be worse than my HSBC credit card.
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