Currency exchange rip-off
Everybody has their own way of buying Euros but for me I wait until I am in Europe and use my Halifax card - zero commission and true inter-bank rate. So, travelling over by Eurotunnel on Tuesday I realised that I had very few Euros. Went to the Travelex bureau in the passenger terminal and asked for £60 in Euros. They offered me 65 Euros! Once I had stood up again I politely declined.
So, the terminal had ATMs dispensing sterling and Euros, however, if you select Euros they convert to £ at 1.17. The true exchange rate was 1.29. Anyway, all machines had run out of euros.
After all that I stopped at a large Autoroute service station (look for the credit card symbol with 20 Euros inside it) and withdrew 200 E using Halifax card. The equivalent of my £60 would be about 77 euros, not 65!
Buyer beware as they say.
Comments
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I think it's generally true that the dearest places to exchange Sterling is on board, at ports and terminals where they have a captive audience.
The Halifax Clarity Credit Card will charge you interest on cash withdrawals, unless you debit your account online. Another card to consider is Revolut, which is a pre-paid cash card giving "perfect" exchange rates. You load it with GBP and can convert to Euros any time or use as a debit card and when you pay in Euros it converts from Sterling at the best rate at the time of the transaction.
We take both these cards.
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I just checked my account and my euro rate was 1.32. That's about a 25% saving.
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Concern is often expressed about the amount of interest you are likely to pay with Halifax Clarity and the like if you don't quickly add money into the account. Early in May I withdrew €300 on my Clarity Card and decided to leave it until the statement towards
the end of the month. I got charged £1.35 in interest .8p of which was later refunded as I paid it immediately became available.David
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I firstly use a Caxton currency card backed up by a credit card. The amount of saving by obtaining a Clarity card is not worth my trouble. I see the rate is falling today, I assume because of the polls favouring the likelyhood of Brexit.
Hitch you did well to get 1.32
peedee
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I had to check out the revolut card so i signed up for it, transfered £10 into the account. It showed up fine. I then sent it back to my bank account and found out it takes 3 dayes to get it back. All in all it seems a good deal, but it did annoy me when it only took 10 seconds for them to take my money but 3 days for them to give it back. Now i know my £10 is not the be all and end all of their business but consider this, they have millions upon millions of pound floating in and out of their account every week. I suggest they are making a tidy sum out of all our little deposits. That said, it's a good deal so anyone off to the continent should go get one.
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The biggest rip off are those coin machines on the ferries. A lot of children were using them on the ferry we used on Wednesday, and putting in one euro in coins gave them back just 52 pence! Next time when we're returning home we'll do what we did once
before, and stand by the machine offering them a better rate to buy their euros. That way we'll both gain! The Bureau de Change on the ship wasn't much better.0
