Halifax - watch out for euro transfers

malc_b

Hi,

A heads up as I fell foul of this and normally I'm pretty clued up. I paid a damage deposit on a villa, 200 euros. The company refunded this direct bank to my account, where upon Halifax stung me £10 on £157. I say £10 because Xe.co say it should be £157. Halifax claim the fee is £7.50 but clearly they have a lower conversion rate as well.

I supposed I was thinking that the foreign bank would convert to GBP and the holiday company would end up with any fees but it didn't work that way. There were no fees from the foreign bank, just those from my bank. And why am I not surprised by that! I suppose someone has to pay for £20,000,0000 bonuses.

dr_adidas01

The holiday company will refund in which ever currency your original transaction was made.

All banks charge a fee for converting euros to GBP when depositing in your current account, even if it is a refund. Its all in the T&Cs of your current account with Halifax

I don't know why you would have thought that the holiday company would end up with the fees. Had they done so they would have then charged you for those fees, so either way you would have lost out.

malc_b

Yes it is all in the T&Cs otherwise they couldn't do but that doesn't mean that everyone is familiar with T&Cs. I paid via my Halifax Clarity credit card which does NOT have a conversion charge. I paid a 1.5% charge for that to the holiday company which was cheaper than any other method. I suppose I just had in mind that as I paid the fee GBP->Euro they would end up with the fee Euro to GBP. Instead I've paid fees both ways.

Anyway, this is just a heads up warning that Halifax will charge and the fee is rather high, 6% in my case where as a poor credit card is only 2.75%.

dr_adidas01

If you paid on your Halifax Clarity card, then I would query this charge as I understand that there is no fee to use it anywhere in the world.

Unless the Bank that did a refund has done a Euro to GBP, then charged you a percentage for the refund from Euros to GBP.

I would still check with Halifax what happened when the refund was done.

pmduk

malc_b wrote: »

Yes it is all in the T&Cs otherwise they couldn't do but that doesn't mean that everyone is familiar with T&Cs.

Anyone who isn't familiar with the terms and conditions they have agreed to are not in a position to complain about them later.

dr_adidas01

pmduk wrote: »

Anyone who isn't familiar with the terms and conditions they have agreed to are not in a position to complain about them later.

So are you saying that you remember off the top of your head every T&C to every product that you have that has T&Cs?

I have an eidetic memory myself, but even I can't remember every T&C to every product that I have!!!

pmduk

No, but I've read them and know most of the salient points. More importantly I don't try complaining about them after agreeing to them.

NFH

malc_b wrote: »

I paid via my Halifax Clarity credit card which does NOT have a conversion charge. I paid a 1.5% charge for that to the holiday company which was cheaper than any other method.

Why didn't you receive the refund back to your Clarity card? Then any loss (or gain) would be limited to the movement in the EUR/GBP rate, and the merchant would have received the commission back that they paid to their own bank to accept a credit card.

pinkdalek

malc_b wrote: »

Hi,

A heads up as I fell foul of this and normally I'm pretty clued up. I paid a damage deposit on a villa, 200 euros. The company refunded this direct bank to my account, where upon Halifax stung me £10 on £157. I say £10 because Xe.co say it should be £157. Halifax claim the fee is £7.50 but clearly they have a lower conversion rate as well.

I supposed I was thinking that the foreign bank would convert to GBP and the holiday company would end up with any fees but it didn't work that way. There were no fees from the foreign bank, just those from my bank. And why am I not surprised by that! I suppose someone has to pay for £20,000,0000 bonuses.

If you really think that banks make massive bonuses from their account charges then they would have to charge more than £7.50! Do you really think their bonuses are made from the day to day high street bank? You would always have a higher exchange rate when converting Euros back to sterling, same would apply if you changed foreign currency at a travel bureau.

If you want to warn about Halifax, then why not compare their charges to other banks to see how much better off or worse off you would be elsewhere?

System

The £7.50 fee that Halifax-BOS charges for receiving a SEPA Credit Transfer is unfair. SEPA Credit Transfers are processed 'straight through' to the beneficiary's account, untouched by human hand - just like UK Faster Payments. Try asking for a refund, saying that the relevant bit of HBOS's T&C is void under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations.
OTOH, banks can reasonably apply a 'spread' to euro->GBP conversions, because they do incur costs. I have no idea whether the spread Halifax-BOS uses is reasonable, or a rip-off.

malc_b

Let me address some these points.

1. I didn't say this was a complaint I said it was a heads up. Yes it was in the T&Cs and yes it was my mistake that I allowed myself to be ripped off. I never said it wasn't.

2. The point about 20,000,0000 bonus was meant to be humour. It was another bank after all. But with 56 million people in UK and assuming the big 4 have equal market share 20 mil is ~£1.50 ahead so I've paid my share 5 years (this is also humour).

3. The holiday company tell me they can only refund to CC for a month hence the reason they sent it straight to my current account as I had paid up before that.

The last post is most sensible but I might just take my lumps and move on. It's clearly possible to do euro payments/refunds a lot cheaper since Halifax do that with their Clarity card and even bad cards only charge half what this cost me. Paypal would have been cheaper too.

Which was my point and my heads up - a euro refund to Halifax current account is an expense way to do it. Learn from my mistake.