MONEY - Here or there?

06/16/2010 - 08:30

Hello everybody, and welcome to the newcomers - it looks like we will be meeting more Stranieri on our next visit. Advice needed - we usually transfer money to our bank in Italy in sterling - and get whatever the rate is over there on the day.  Any thoughts on whether it might be better to send it as Euros, from our bank here in England - might the rate be better?  Also, does anybody know if the second hand place on the eastern outskirts of Lucca is still there?   That's all for now from   Fabbriche   

Comment

caio bunterboy..............I'm intrigued to know what is a 'pretty good' rate. I'm not unhappy with my regular £2000 payment through Moneycorp. My last payment was July 31st.........£2,000 + £4 fee (total £2,004) left one of my UK accounts. Amount received here in my Italian Bank account = 2,239.20euros. (exchange rate 1.117) If I had upped that to £3,000...........it would have cost me £3,000 = £4 fee (total £3,004), Italian bank account would therefore increase by 3,358.80euros. Is this 'good' or not? IF there is a major difference via other suppliers around that date..........., I'd be happy to hear ! ciao S

In reply to by sprostoni

My last payment was July 31st.........£2,000 + £4 fee (total £2,004) left one of my UK accounts. Amount received here in my Italian Bank account = 2,239.20euros. (exchange rate 1.117)

I use HiFX, and they send me a daily email showing the previus day's rates.  Looking at 31 July their rates were LOW 1.1928 and HIGH 1.2043.  Let's be pessimistic and say you bought at exactly the low point of the day, you'd have got 1.1928. Now, that is not the rate they give you, but for larger quantities (£10,000) they usually come in about 1 cent less.  So for that sort of amount you'd have got something like 1.18 to 1.19, as opposed to your 1.117 - a big difference in my view.  Oh and on these larger sums, no charges whatsoever. I exchanged money on 23 June, when there was LOW 1.2061 and HIGH 1.2192, and I got 1.2018. So, is there any way you can do fewer but bigger transfers?

Thanks Serrano, I like to have a comparative value to work with, I may consider the larger sums and with less frequency. I'm very happy with the Moneycorp service, but hundreds of euros extra would buy quite a bit more wine (!) Cheers, S

... as long as you are ok with them not being under and FS control. Any of the big FX companies should be ok, hifx , moneycorp. You can fix a rate for regular transfers for up to a year or so and no matter what anyone else says on here, it's far, far better than any bank (even if a little more risk, no more than the likes of northern rock of course...). The rate currently is 120.32, so I reckon you would get around 1.17 at best from any bank , for smaller amounts Nationwide card would probably be the same or better... for an FX company you would get around 1.19.... On a large amount of money it makes a big difference...    :)

Thanks to, Bunterboy and Stevegw for your input., I have been on to Tor fx. I hadn't realised it was so easy.   And thanks to Tinker - we will look in to MercatoUsato on our next trip.  

To give another comparison - on July 13th we transferred £8500 (approx) ie it was €10,000 that arrived in our Italian bank account via HIFX so no fees and the rate was 1.1737 HIFX always used to say they would refund any bank charges (from receiving end) if the transferred amount was below €12000, not sure if this continues and we never put it to the test

sprostoni. Average spot rate on 31 July was 1.20. (little intraday fluctuation). Dealing at 1.5% away from spot (including any charges) which pretty much any foreign exchange broker would have been able to achieve for you would have yielded an effective rate of €1.182. I would go back to Moneycorp if I were you and ask them to justify their rate.