help required... easiest way to get money to Indonesia

RedBern

my daughter is in Bali, travelling alone. Nationwide issued a new card for her current account 4 weeks ago, which I returned to the branch as she's not been home for 6 months, and won't be home for another 6 weeks. the new card is necessary because of the internet changes they've made. They have now cancelled her existing card, and, after many phone calls from her and then from me, we've been told today that Nationwide can't reactivate her existing card and they need to send a new one out to her. (I've tried explaining that she's travelling and hasn't got a fixed address but that seems to be lost on them!). This card will not be available for another 7-10 days.

In the interim, she has a cc and is able to draw (v expensive) cash on that - and Nationwide have said they may refund her charges on this.

Can anyone suggest a more sensible way of me making sure I can get money to her? I don't want her carrying large amount of cash, for obvious reasons.

mrposhman

have you tried one of the cash transfer products out there?

Post Office use moneygram which means you pay the cash at a post office, pass the number of the transaction to your daughter and he can collect the cash there and then. You do have to pay a transfer fee though so probably worth sending all the money together.

You will need to find where she can collect in Indonesia, ie. from a bank / post office etc

Hope this helps

meester

mrposhman wrote: »

have you tried one of the cash transfer products out there?

Post Office use moneygram which means you pay the cash at a post office, pass the number of the transaction to your daughter and he can collect the cash there and then. You do have to pay a transfer fee though so probably worth sending all the money together.

You will need to find where she can collect in Indonesia, ie. from a bank / post office etc

Hope this helps

Moneygram rip you off on the exchange rate to Indonesia.

Western Union is better. You should be able to price up both transfers on their respective websites.

But TBH, the credit card is probably cheaper than either. For small transactions like the OP is talking about, Western Union fees start at £12, which is a massive % of the amount transferred. For a £999.99 (max) transfer, the cost is £47, i.e. 4.7%, plus 2.5% charge on the exchange rate = 7.2% That's a huge amount of money in Indonesia - for £100, the fee is £14, or 14%, plus 2.5% charge = 16.5%. For Moneygram, the fees are the same, but the exchange rate rip-off is is 4.25%, so you could be looking at nearly 20%.

You might think the credit card is expensive, but it's almost certain to be cheaper than a money transfer service.

If you go to Bank Lippo they will do a cash advance at no charge (maybe other banks too - not paying any charge should be the target), you will just pay the charges from the credit card in England. I would check the credit card withdrawal charges and work out the best option between ATM and cash advance in a bank. Which credit card provider is it? I have Nationwide Credit and Debit cards for this precise reason.

If you put the credit card into credit (i.e. pay cash onto it) it's possible that your bank will not charge a fee, I would check with them, and it would certainly avoid the immediate interest that is charged on cash withdrawals/cash advances.

The other thing is cash machines vary substantially in maximum payout. I'm pretty sure you should be able to find a 3,000,000 rp max payout machine (£165), but some could be as little as 400,000rp. If you are paying a per-withdrawal charge, it's obviously worth taking out the maximum possible per transaction.

On my card, it's 24.9% cash interest rate. The fee is 3%, minimum £2.50, which means that withdrawals of less than £83/1,500,000 rp are not cost-effective. If you are paying that fee, but have paid cash onto the card (put it into credit), then with the 2.75% exchange rate loading, the total cost works out at 5.75%. Some card will be better than this, I don't think any are worse. You won't beat that at all, as other options such as arranging an ikobo card are time-consuming and involve an initial cost.

I'm not sure how much cash she is spending, but Indonesia is cheap, I guess in six weeks she might spend £500, so the credit card fees might come to £30, which isn't really the end of the world.

Just to add, you could always post the card it to Indonesia air mail, poste restante, in my experience it would take about 7 days to reach there, and cost no more than a couple of pounds for postage. It's pretty safe TBH: you would communicate the PIN separately. You could of course ask Nationwide to pony up the cost of a UPS-type service, which might be substantially more.

RedBern

meester - i did press 'thanks' but it didn't seem an adequate credit for such a helpful response. I'm online with my dd at the moment so have sent the link to this discussion - hopefully it will reassure her.

Just before reading the previous post I was picking up forms in Post Office to moneygram this money over to her - but in view of the high cost decided not to and to put cash onto cc for her to use. She was very reluctant to have so much cash on her though which made me hesitate - and I'm glad I did now.

Nationwide........very disappointing..

Voyager2002

I experienced a similar problem some years ago: the card on which I was relying got stolen near the beginning of a long journey. A replacement card was sent out to me in Hong Kong, and I just stuck around there for a couple of weeks until it arrived.

In this case, Nationwide have agreed to waive the charges involved in drawing cash with their credit card. That would seem to be a reasonable solution for the short term, although it leaves the daughter without any backup in case anything else goes wrong. So a replacement card will have to be sent out to Indonesia as soon as it is available.

Surely it would be possible for your daughter to arrange to be in a major city in about three weeks in order to pick up the new card. Jakarta would be the obvious choice, but maybe Bogor would be better: a place with a large expatriate community, banks and hotels geared up to meeting the needs of foreigners, and probably less crime than Jakarta. Presumably a bank, hotel or international organisation could receive the card and hand it over to the owner.

jcl_2

hello meester
I can see from your post that you are quite knowledgeable about indonesia
so could you please advice on the following my son and his girlfriend are getting married the first week in august and thier honeymoon is in bali.
(18 days)

what would be the best credit card to apply for and use? (probably better applying for two incase of any problems) is it better to withdraw cash from atms rather than pay for goods and services with a credit card to minimise any possible fraud. (am i correct in thinking abbey zero and nationwide credit cards)

incoming calls and text from the uk to his mobile phone will be expensive as he will pay the charges outside the uk is there any way these costs can be reduced?

do you think would he need any ready cash on arrival?

thanks for your help
regards
jcl

Voyager2002

jcl wrote: »

hello meester
I can see from your post that you are quite knowledgeable about indonesia
so could you please advice on the following my son and his girlfriend are getting married the first week in august and thier honeymoon is in bali.
(18 days)

what would be the best credit card to apply for and use? (probably better applying for two incase of any problems) is it better to withdraw cash from atms rather than pay for goods and services with a credit card to minimise any possible fraud. (am i correct in thinking abbey zero and nationwide credit cards)

incoming calls and text from the uk to his mobile phone will be expensive as he will pay the charges outside the uk is there any way these costs can be reduced?

do you think would he need any ready cash on arrival?

thanks for your help
regards
jcl

The answer is the same for any country: best credit cards are Nationwide; Post Office and perhaps Abbey Zero (I have no experience with this last one but have had good experiences with the first two). For cash, the Nationwide Flex account is the clear winner.

Voyager2002

jcl wrote: »

hello meester
I can see from your post that you are quite knowledgeable about indonesia
so could you please advice on the following my son and his girlfriend are getting married the first week in august and thier honeymoon is in bali.
(18 days)

incoming calls and text from the uk to his mobile phone will be expensive as he will pay the charges outside the uk is there any way these costs can be reduced?

do you think would he need any ready cash on arrival?

thanks for your help
regards
jcl

Surely you are not planning to telephone him on his honeymoon?

In any case, any self-respecting bridegroom would keep his mobile phone switched off while away, as a basic courtesy to his bride. The most you should expect in the way of communication is perhaps a postcard.

Sam_Bee

A particular note re: Bali / Indonesia (although i'm sure applies to most destinations) is do advise your bank that you are travelling there before you go. I didn't on my recent trip and Lloyds decided to stop my card leaving me penniless. My last few rupiah were spent in a Wartel (telephone shop) calling a stupidly slow and expensive number persuading Lloyds it wasn't fraud.

My fault, but easily done!

jcl_2

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Surely you are not planning to telephone him on his honeymoon?

In any case, any self-respecting bridegroom would keep his mobile phone switched off while away, as a basic courtesy to his bride. The most you should expect in the way of communication is perhaps a postcard.

!!!definately not!!! but his business will have to keep in contact

regards jcl

meester

jcl wrote: »

hello meester
I can see from your post that you are quite knowledgeable about indonesia
so could you please advice on the following my son and his girlfriend are getting married the first week in august and thier honeymoon is in bali.
(18 days)

what would be the best credit card to apply for and use? (probably better applying for two incase of any problems) is it better to withdraw cash from atms rather than pay for goods and services with a credit card to minimise any possible fraud. (am i correct in thinking abbey zero and nationwide credit cards)

I wouldn't worry about fraud, it could happen in the UK, just check the statement when you get back, I've never had a problem. Most transactions are cash-only anyway. As other say, the Nationwide credit/debit(or atm) card combination is the best world-over.

incoming calls and text from the uk to his mobile phone will be expensive as he will pay the charges outside the uk is there any way these costs can be reduced?

don't think there's a charge for receiving texts, you can buy a PAYG SIM when you get there, but as others have noted, he shouldn't really be receiving many calls, and not worth the hassle at all on honeymoon to be getting SIM, communicating the number to you; check the cost of incoming calls, I guess about £1/minute, and bear it mind.

do you think would he need any ready cash on arrival?

Has he got a visa? Having the visa fee in $ ready would be a good plan.

No local cash is needed, there will be an ATM in the airport, though in the event that it's not working, having an extra $40 would be handy, as you can change it to rupiah, and it will cover any taxi costs and food until you find a working ATM or bank for cash advance.