Idea for Site Feature / Money Abroad / Halifax Foreign Money Warning

yatest5

I recently moved to Halifax's High Interest account on the advice of this site - its been great so far... UNTIL I noticed they change £1.50 for every use of your card abroad (draw out cash or buy anything, even for say £1.50).

It was lucky I noticed this as early as I did, when it only cost me around fifteen pounds. I have cards from three other banks and NONE of them work like this - they all tranform your spend into pounds (probably not at the best rate) and then maybe charge you 2.5% commission. This is alot fairer as it's related to what you spend.

Because I do alot of work abroad, this has basically made this card unusable for me - and if I hadn't been watching I could have spend a HORRIBLE amount of money on these charges. Halifax refused to refund them when I asked nicely (because I didn't know of the charge).

Anyway, I thought it might be good to have a chart showing how much say €50 would cost you to draw out and spend on debit card for all the main banks....

KTF

They wont refund the charges due to ignorance as they would have been in the account t&cs. If you travel abroad a lot then you would be much better off with the Nationwide current account.

The Halifax charges are also listed here: http://www.halifax.co.uk/bankaccounts/understandingcharges.asp

Charges for using your card abroad
If you use your card abroad, the amount of the transaction will be changed to pounds sterling on the date we take it out of your account. This may not be the same date that the transaction is carried out. We'll choose the exchange rate that applies and we'll include a conversion fee of 2.75% of the amount of the transaction. We will also deduct a service charge of £1.50 from your account immediately for each transaction.

yatest5

ah - so they charge 1.50 AND 2.5% commision. Nice .

Kilty_2

AFAIK Lloyds TSB do this too. (£1.50 and 2.5% commission)

Open a Nationwide FlexAccount if you spend abroad frequently and avoid any kind of charge .

Gordon_the_Moron

Just for your information regarding Lloyds TSB.

I got a letter today stating their charges are going from 2.75% to 2.99% for use abroad. I don't pay any attention to these rates as I only use a Nationwide card when I'm abroad.

regularsaver1

my brother is in OZ for 6 months

He uses a nationwide account whilst out there - didn't get the full current account with them though

and then he will return to Halifax when gets back

most banks charge these fees

Kilty_2

Gordon_the_Moron wrote: »

Just for your information regarding Lloyds TSB.

I got a letter today stating their charges are going from 2.75% to 2.99% for use abroad. I don't pay any attention to these rates as I only use a Nationwide card when I'm abroad.

.

Good job I'll only be using it as a backup source if my Nationwide card doesn't work for whatever reason.

Quick question..... do ATMs abroad usually accept more than one type of card (Visa, Cirrus, etc) as they do here?

My Nationwide card is Cirrus (since they won't give me a debit card) and the MasterCard ATM locator is useless so I'm relying on the Visa one to get an idea of where I'll find an ATM when I'm abroad next week.

regularsaver1

my brothers is cirrus

what country are you going to?