Fairfx Fairpay warning to others

lil.smartie

I've used this service 3 times now to transfer money from my UK account to my US one and there is a hidden charge of $20 each time. It seems that they use UK Barclays bank who instead of then them transferring the money to (in my case) Bank of America they pass it to another US bank who take the fee then pass on the remainder to my bank who then charge me a wire fee ($12 but I expected this).

Their site states that they show the total costs upfront & warn you to check with your receiving bank for their fees but there is nothing to warn against these fees which you can do nothing about and can't find out about until it's too late.

I've been emailing their customer services who have been very helpful but I am $60 out of pocket, luckily each transfer I did was a decent amount of money so not the worst thing in the world but it does make them not the cheapest to use and I will be taking my business elsewhere in future because of this.

I hope this helps someone else avoid being 'ripped off' with this hidden cost.

Kate

stilltheone

Why not use someone like the Halifax to transfer £s and let BOA do the conversion? Halifax charge £7.50/£9.50.

lil.smartie

I've found global web pay, £4.95 and paid in local bank to bank payment so no fee from BoA either

Kate

stilltheone

lil.smartie wrote: »

I've found global web pay, £4.95 and paid in local bank to bank payment so no fee from BoA either

Kate

But you are losing nearly 4 cents to the £. So on a £1000 transfer that's US$40 anyway.

Swings and roundabouts...

lil.smartie

Not when I did it I wasn't! And £4.95 compared to $32 and transparency on fees as opposed to still denying that they did anything wrong & that I should have known there would be another fee (how?!) I'd rather deal with them even if it did cost slightly more!

Kate

stilltheone

lil.smartie wrote: »

Not when I did it I wasn't! And £4.95 compared to $32 and transparency on fees as opposed to still denying that they did anything wrong & that I should have known there would be another fee (how?!) I'd rather deal with them even if it did cost slightly more!

Kate

Really? Perhaps you can show the rate that you received from GlobalPay and on which date.
I can compare that with a mid-market rate on the day.

plinkykev

I'm *trying* to use the FairPay system to transfer €'s to Finland.
On each occasion I get "an error has occurred" problem. I'm using the same debit card as I use for their Top-Up MasterCard, which I used fine about a month ago, but for the FairPay system, it's bombing out.

Anyone else had issues / got ideas?

As for rates discussion above (based on €3000):

GlobalWebPay costs: £2716.32 (inc £4.95 fee) while
FairFx costs only: £2668.56

As such, the GlobalWebPay total is only just less than buying notes at Tesco/Travel Agents,so not too cheap at all...

Anyone found any other (cheaper/reliable) options??