[LINK] RFI: Overseas Payments

[Dr Bob Jansen (in Korea)]

Roger,

I am currently on an extended stay in South Korea and regularly have to 
transfer money to our korean bank account. I have found the cheapest way 
is to do an international transfer directly to the bank via ANZ's 
internet banking system. That costs AU$24 per transaction but then, of 
course, there is a conversion fee from AU$ to korean won that will be 
charged either by ANZ or by the receiving bank, depending on if you 
transfer AU$ or korean won.

Either way, we're short, depending on the transfer rate as ANZ adds 
their AU$24 onto the amount you are transferring.

CITIBank offer an account and Visa debit card that they claim is fee 
free for an overseas transaction. Not sure if this works though.

Like you, all I find is no matter what I do, I have to pay.

bobj


On 18/03/14 12:46 PM, Roger Clarke wrote:
> What are linkers' experiences with making payments overseas?
>
> I paid 50% of a 10-day rental in France recently.
>
> Suncorp took AUD 20 off me for starters.
> Then it arrived EUR 38 short.
>
> That mirrors the experience with a payment to an Austrian bank last year.
>
> Despite the invention of SWIFT 40 years ago, it appears that
> Australian banks aren't big enough or organised enough to be able to
> pay directly to mainstream banks overseas.
>
> Instead, unnecessary intermediaries are used.  Suncorp, and I gather
> banks generally, protect themslelves by saying 'there may be fees'.
> But you can't know in advance what they are.  I'm looking for someone
> to threaten litigation, in order to force basic consumer rights to be
> reinstated.
>
> In this case, Suncorp wrote an unapologetic letter back to me,
> pointed to their Terms, and offered to send the missing EUR 38 on to
> the French bank as a one-time-only favour.
>
> I agreed, partly to get the EUR 38 back, partly to solve the
> immediate problem of the short-payment, but mainly to establish that
> they can indeed achieve payment of a nominated amount to a distant
> account.  Precisely EUR 38 arrived.  So they're bare-faced liars for
> saying that they can't do it!
>
>
> In the meantime, I need to make a further 50% payment to the French bank.
>
> Does anyone know of a way to transfer funds that costs less than AUD
> 80 per transaction??!!
>
> (With the largely-automated systems that are in place, somewhere
> closer to AUD 0.80 seems like a fair price.  Currency conversion is a
> separate transaction of course, with its own 'spread', i.e. fees,
> plus commission).
>
>
> [I'll claim this isn't Off-Topic, on the basis that, like SCADA, some
> part of the international transfer system probably now uses the
> Internet - one hopes, using a VPN ...]
>
>

-- 
--------------------------------
Dr Bob Jansen
Turtle Lane Studios Pty Ltd
PO Box 26, Erskineville NSW 2043, Australia
Ph (Korea): +82 10-4494-0328
Ph (Australia) +61 414 297 448
Resume: http://au.linkedin.com/in/bobjan
Skype: bobjtls
http://www.turtlelane.com.au

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