1 euro for £1.23 via a 'moneycorp' foreign currency atm at Stansted?

Straightbat

Ok now you've all nearly died laughing...yes I did fall into the trap of confirming acceptance of this rate, and paid £197.90 for €160 on 18th June. I didnt believe pigs could fly when I saw the rate in front of me, so quickly and almost on auto pilot while in transit I assumed I must have got the exchange rate the wrong way round in my head. What I had done only sunk in when I got on the plane.

Bizarrely the machine refused to give me the money on my Halifax Clarity Card despite accepting the pin and going through every other stage until the end, and exactly the same thing happened with two ATMs in Italy, so I had to use my Visa debit back up card instead which worked perfectly in all three machines. Halifax have been able to offer me no explanation as to why their card failed (it worked in a local ATM when I got back to the UK for cash withdrawal). In Italy, contactless and chip and pin payments worked with it.

Anyway back to the exchange rate at Stansted. Do they really mark up to gain a profit of about 40%? This rate was way above that which I've seen in another thread about the same issue (which is now closed). My son thinks they programmed the machine with the wrong rate by inverting the conversion rate. The advertised moneycorp rate on the day was €1.12 to the pound.

Deeply shocked of Birmingham, now suffering PTS whenever I have to use a cash machine.

NoodleDoodleMan

Drawing cash at an airport in the circumstances explained is about the worst choice you could make.

What motivated this error of judgement ?

Straightbat

Thought it was a normal ATM. Never have a problem using them at foreign airports and was in a bit of a hurry. I'd never go to a currency exchange desk - I didn't realise they'd automated the rip off too.

londoninvestor

Straightbat wrote: »

Anyway back to the exchange rate at Stansted. Do they really mark up to gain a profit of about 40%? This rate was way above that which I've seen in another thread about the same issue (which is now closed). My son thinks they programmed the machine with the wrong rate by inverting the conversion rate..

I don't think this was a mistake - last time I was at Stansted (April), the rate at the walk-up Moneycorp counter was hilariously bad. Maybe not quite as bad - £1.10 for a euro or something.

It won't have been a case of inverting the rate - €1.23 to the pound would have been extraordinarily generous, far better than even the interbank market. (But I can totally relate to seeing "1.23" in the couple of seconds you have at the ATM and thinking "that seems fine"!)

Straightbat wrote: »

The advertised moneycorp rate on the day was €1.12 to the pound.

The rate they give online, to people who are in a position to shop around, won't be the same one that the captive audience at the airport gets.

Kernow666

people are always banging on about the airports ripping you off , they don't rip you off as you know the price before you buy


90% of the business is people arriving and changing money into GBP

Voyager2002

Kernow666 wrote: »

90% of the business is people arriving and changing money into GBP

Not at an ATM in Stansted dispensing Euro notes.

eDicky

Straightbat wrote: »

Anyway back to the exchange rate at Stansted. Do they really mark up to gain a profit of about 40%?

I think they were previously not quite so outrageous, but last Tuesday I took a few euros from a MoneyCorp ATM at Stansted and I could hardly believe my eyes.

I was offered a rate of 0.8063 for euros - meaning 80c for a pound..!!!

Of course, I selected 'Without Conversion' and my Monzo card gave me 1.11 euros per pound.

But I suspect that a lot of people, maybe most, fall for it...

Straightbat

eDicky wrote: »

I think they were previously not quite so outrageous, but last Tuesday I took a few euros from a MoneyCorp ATM at Stansted and I could hardly believe my eyes.

I was offered a rate of 0.8063 for euros - meaning 80c for a pound..!!!

Of course, I selected 'Without Conversion' and my Monzo card gave me 1.11 euros per pound.

But I suspect that a lot of people, maybe most, fall for it...

O right. I vaguely remember having that choice. So choosing "conversion" was the mistake I made!! I didnt know what that was about to be honest...I just assumed it was the option you had to choose to get foreign currency...doh!!!