Paying for accommodation in France

toebone

To confirm a booking of an apartment in France, I have to send a cheque for 100 euros. I bank with Lloyds. From their website, it looks as though they will charge me £20 for the priviledge! Is there a cheaper way?

For another apartment, I again have to pay a fee, this one is £100. I have been given their IBAN code. Apparently, from the Lloyds website, I cannot use internet banking for this. Again, I fear a £20 charge.

hartcjhart

do the people with the appartments not take C/C or paypal

benjus

As pointed out above, Paypal or CC is likely to be the cheapest and easiest option. However, if they can't accept those, read on...

For sending money to a bank account I suggest you have a look at www. moneybookers.com - they charge 50p per transaction and offer a good exchange rate. It takes 1-3 days, which is probably faster than Lloyds. Don't forget to account for differences in exchange rates when comparing options - just find out how many Pounds you need to send so that they receive the right amount in Euros.

I don't know anything about Euro cheques. Presumably the recipient has a bank account they intend to pay the cheque into and could give you the IBAN number of that account if you asked - this is likely to be cheaper and quicker.

dzug1

Consider sending cash International Recorded delivery - you can pay a little extra to insure up to £100 but it should still be under a fiver

Always_Harassed

I used my Halifax Visa Electron card and it cost me about £9.00 online but would have cost around £20 in branch.

toebone

hartcjhart wrote: »

do the people with the appartments not take C/C or paypal

I wish they did! Thanks for the suggestions. I've used PayPal in this kind of situation before. I don't know what CC is.
Thanks anyway.

toebone

dzug1 wrote: »

Consider sending cash International Recorded delivery - you can pay a little extra to insure up to £100 but it should still be under a fiver

Thanks.
This is probably what I'll do.

hartcjhart

Hi CC is Credit Card

toebone

benjus wrote: »

As pointed out above, Paypal or CC is likely to be the cheapest and easiest option. However, if they can't accept those, read on...

For sending money to a bank account I suggest you have a look at www. moneybookers.com - they charge 50p per transaction and offer a good exchange rate. It takes 1-3 days, which is probably faster than Lloyds. Don't forget to account for differences in exchange rates when comparing options - just find out how many Pounds you need to send so that they receive the right amount in Euros.

I don't know anything about Euro cheques. Presumably the recipient has a bank account they intend to pay the cheque into and could give you the IBAN number of that account if you asked - this is likely to be cheaper and quicker.

Thanks for the suggestion of moneybookers but internet reviews of that company are varied. i think I'll steer clear.

toebone

hartcjhart wrote: »

Hi CC is Credit Card

DOH!
no, that's not an option for them either!