£2000 Transfer To Thailand Cost Me £200!

[hhgz]

"I need to bring up to 500,000 Baht for Sin Sod display (cash) and then will be given it back."

Fat chance. Why don't you show them a photograph of 500,000THB? Why not give them an IOU?

[katabeachbum]

For amounts smaller than 150.000 baht, I v recived best exchange rate withdrawing from Visa card. Passport and card inside bank. Limit in LOS pr withdrawel 150.000 baht.

I use several LOS banks, but for larger amounts its been best with sending foreign currency to Ayudhya (the yellow bank). At day of arrival, they call me to ask if I accept exchange rate. Can wait to exchange if wanted, or if accept thai baht becomes available same day.

You do not need a forreign currensy account to do this.

[thecatman]

For amounts smaller than 150.000 baht, I v recived best exchange rate withdrawing from Visa card. Passport and card inside bank. Limit in LOS pr withdrawel 150.000 baht.

I use several LOS banks, but for larger amounts its been best with sending foreign currency to Ayudhya (the yellow bank). At day of arrival, they call me to ask if I accept exchange rate. Can wait to exchange if wanted, or if accept thai baht becomes available same day.

You do not need a forreign currensy account to do this.

This sounds like a way forward, but I was wondering, if you decide not to exchange on the day your funds arrive, and you do not have a foreign currency account, then where do your pounds sit until you do decide to exchange??

[weescotsguy66]

First point. OK, I use Bank of Scotland / Halifax (19.50) per transaction, I too had the tellermake a mistake by the teller of sending it in THB instead of GBP, I went onto the Bangkok Bank website for that day & found out the rate that I would have got and calculated what I had lost by the error in the transaction.

Met with the Manager of my branch and discussed with him about the teller mistake and he refunded me the difference.

Another way to send money overseas is to give your Gf/wife to be an Nationwide ATM card and just transfer money into it, at present only Bank of Ayuttaya are not charging fees for foreign ATM withdrawal. Limited to 15,000 baht per day unless you have multiple accounts.

Second point If this is the only the first time you have sent money over to Thailand I am suspecting you have not known your gf/ wife to be long, this is probably the more serious thing.

Question. Would you get married to a farang in Farangland with her only knowing her a short period of time?

[SMEEERE]

Did your girlfriend collect it ? "ITS A JOKE " , seriously get the receipt, someone added an extra 0 on the end,.

[mahtin]

Let me know if you find something.

Been sending Swift payments to Bangkok Bank every month for over 10 years.

If you have a Thai Bank account and ATM card, That is capable of receiving automated payments.

Try sending from a Paypal account, a transfer of £100.00 costs £0.50 and takes 5 days to a receiving Paypal account, there is no fee to transfer from Paypal to A Thai bank account in multiples of £50.00 and above.

I realise its long winded but £5.00 per thousand is Ok, and standing orders remove the Hard work.

Hope this helps

Regards

Robin.

True, but expensive.

I just transferred Euro from Paypal to my Thai bank account, and the exchange rate was 2% less then what I would have gotten for banknotes within Thailand.

Which makes the difference with the telex transfer rate around 3.8%!

Thanks, but I pay the charges my end - €26.50 - and I get BB's RoE as at end of day, which is always going to be lots better than Paypal, which I doubt my mother-in-law could handle anyway .

[Emeritus]

You haven't lost anything yet, if you get a similar rate with Natwest when you transfer the money back, you will only loose the amount in the spread. Regardless of how close their rate is to the XE rate.

I believe Thai banks will not remit Baht to the UK, so it will have to be GBP for the remittance from Thailand to the UK.

[somtom]

First point. OK, I use Bank of Scotland / Halifax (19.50) per transaction, I too had the tellermake a mistake by the teller of sending it in THB instead of GBP, I went onto the Bangkok Bank website for that day & found out the rate that I would have got and calculated what I had lost by the error in the transaction.

Met with the Manager of my branch and discussed with him about the teller mistake and he refunded me the difference.

Another way to send money overseas is to give your Gf/wife to be an Nationwide ATM card and just transfer money into it, at present only Bank of Ayuttaya are not charging fees for foreign ATM withdrawal. Limited to 15,000 baht per day unless you have multiple accounts.

Second point If this is the only the first time you have sent money over to Thailand I am suspecting you have not known your gf/ wife to be long, this is probably the more serious thing.

Question. Would you get married to a farang in Farangland with her only knowing her a short period of time?

Yeah, after Emeritus helped me through working out the problem this is what I'm going to do. My Bank branch manager has asked me to get the SCB rate on the day and they'll look to refund the difference if it is identified as an error. I have online access to the SCB account so I can check everything at both ends. I'm glad someone has had a similar experience with a happy result.

As for my missus... it's kind of irrelevant to this issue but for all your peace of mind we've already lived together in the USA where we met a few years ago. There's no juicy bar girl story here. Just kids who did MBAs and PhDs together abroad who now want to marry traditionally and live together

[sleepyjohn]

Natwest are one of the Big Four Scumbags.

In the eighties I opened a "special" high interest account.

I used to park sums of money in there the way grannies do.

Many years later I actually looked and found myself getting a negligable interest rate.

They had been doing the trick, since exposed by the Sunday Times, of opening a new "high interest" account every year with another fancy name, usually with gold, silver or something rich-sounding name, whilst regularly dropping the rates on the previous years "high interest" accounts until they were "no-interest" accounts.

A great way of conning grannies who don't keep a close watch on their money.......and me.

[katabeachbum]

For amounts smaller than 150.000 baht, I v recived best exchange rate withdrawing from Visa card. Passport and card inside bank. Limit in LOS pr withdrawel 150.000 baht.

I use several LOS banks, but for larger amounts its been best with sending foreign currency to Ayudhya (the yellow bank). At day of arrival, they call me to ask if I accept exchange rate. Can wait to exchange if wanted, or if accept thai baht becomes available same day.

You do not need a forreign currensy account to do this.

This sounds like a way forward, but I was wondering, if you decide not to exchange on the day your funds arrive, and you do not have a foreign currency account, then where do your pounds sit until you do decide to exchange??

If you do not have foreign currency account, your FC funds sit in the banks account until you accept exchangerate. Or you return them to senders account. For max one year iv been told. But Iv never waited more than a week. Theyv allways come up with a decent exchange rate for large amounts, and you bet Iv tried them all.

Edited May 28, 2009 by katabeachbum

[hansnl]

Take my Sin Sod display money question as the example.

If I move £10000 over by SWIFT and the selling/buying rate is 7% different to the actual rate then I lose £700 moving it over, then when I bring it back a week later I lose another £700. Add in the SWIFT charges and I'll be about £1450 out of pocket, pretty much for no reason.

Every percent better someone's buy/sell rate is saves me £200 that otherwise goes to pay for two bankers' Porsches

Right!

And that is the way how banks steal from you.

The bloody banks are the reason we have this financial crisis, the reason you probably lost some or a lot of money, the reason why so many people loose everything because they lost jobs, and so on.

Natwest still charges 7 pounds on incoming euro transfers, against all rules.

And the thing is, nobody seems to do a thing about it.

Taking out money by ATM is getting expensive too.

The charge of the bank at home, and nowadays the 150 baht fee from the Thai banks.

All banks now.

And they also charge 150 baht from a credit card withdrawal!

Maybe it is getting time somebody finds out a way to circumvent the bloody, stealing, moneygrabbing banks.

Because a swift transfer cost the banks (at both sides) only, well maybe, 50p.

ATM, maybe the same?

Plus of course, the profit on the exchange rate.

Edited May 28, 2009 by hansnl

[melbat]

...Q1: I asked NatWest to send the wire in pounds - did they mess me up and they did the transfer and that's why I got the bad rate?

Q2: A 4.4 baht spread is not as bad as the 7 baht spread my mental estimates pulled up, but it's still not this 1 baht spread people here are talking about. Where can I get SWIFT transfers with 1 baht spreads?

Yes, NatWest messed you up big time. I suspected that this was what happened, that NatWest converted at their end and remitted Baht to Siam Commercial Bank (SCB).

The line for "REMIT AMOUNT" on the advice of SCB is structured like this:

REMIT AMOUNT <currency symbol> <amount> @ <exchange rate> CT BAHT <amount>

When your wife gets the printout she will see that <currency symbol> is THB and the amount next to it is the Baht amount.

SCB's commission is 0.25%, but minimum 200 Baht, maximum 500 Baht (www.scb.co.th/en/pnb/pnb_otr_irm_in.shtml)

On www.scb.co.th/exchange/bk-pvsexchange.htm you can look up the exchange rate that SCB would have given you on the day the SCB account was credited. Talk to Natwest and see if they will reimburse you the difference, but if your instructions to remit GBP were not in writing they will probably not accept responsibility.

I had the same problem last year with Barclays.. I ordered 5000 in Sterling to be sent to my SCB account. When it arrived they had sent it in Thai Baht and the difference was nearly 500 pounds in exchange rate differences. I contacted Barclays and after many phone calls they realized they had made the mistake and they paid the difference back to my UK account. You should contact your UK bank and make sure they followed your instructions correctly. If it was their mistake you should get a refund.

[Livinginexile]

First point. OK, I use Bank of Scotland / Halifax (19.50) per transaction, I too had the tellermake a mistake by the teller of sending it in THB instead of GBP, I went onto the Bangkok Bank website for that day & found out the rate that I would have got and calculated what I had lost by the error in the transaction.

Met with the Manager of my branch and discussed with him about the teller mistake and he refunded me the difference.

Another way to send money overseas is to give your Gf/wife to be an Nationwide ATM card and just transfer money into it, at present only Bank of Ayuttaya are not charging fees for foreign ATM withdrawal. Limited to 15,000 baht per day unless you have multiple accounts.

Second point If this is the only the first time you have sent money over to Thailand I am suspecting you have not known your gf/ wife to be long, this is probably the more serious thing.

Question. Would you get married to a farang in Farangland with her only knowing her a short period of time?

Yeah, after Emeritus helped me through working out the problem this is what I'm going to do. My Bank branch manager has asked me to get the SCB rate on the day and they'll look to refund the difference if it is identified as an error. I have online access to the SCB account so I can check everything at both ends. I'm glad someone has had a similar experience with a happy result.

As for my missus... it's kind of irrelevant to this issue but for all your peace of mind we've already lived together in the USA where we met a few years ago. There's no juicy bar girl story here. Just kids who did MBAs and PhDs together abroad who now want to marry traditionally and live together

Thats good Somtom but why do you have to remitt 500k now?

Just take the cash over with you.

It's custom for the groom to bring it with him on the day of the wedding, not once is it in the hands of the bride's family.

Why are you sending 1000's of pounds to Thailand if she is rich enough to do MBA's and PhD's in the States?

Ohh and don't tell us, she's Thai Chinese too right?

[theoldgit]

Worth noting for the future for anyone sending cash to Thailand is that with a HBOS account you can make international transfers on-line for £9.50 a pop, and you can specify that you want to send GBP's.

Well worth checking out, you have to of course register for their Internet Banking.

[itsmeewan]

Last week I did a SWIFT transfer from my NatWest bank in the UK to a Siam Commercial Bank account in Thailand. When checking through what I was charged at my end and what arrived there it was £200 more than the actual live transfer rate.

What a rip-off... and that is even with me specifying to send in GBP and not asking for express SWIFT.

Does anyone have good advice as the cheapest way to send/wire/transfer money in £1000+ amounts from the UK to a Thai bank account with minimal hassle? I will need to do this a few more times in the next 3 months and I have a feeling NatWest is not the best way to go.

If this has been asked before - please give me the thread links. I've just spent 30 mins searching and reading here but got lost in all of everyone else's technicalities... not good for a forex newb like me.

------- -------

And also coming up for me in a few months... I need to bring up to 500,000 Baht for Sin Sod display (cash) and then will be given it back. So what is the best way to transfer this amount from the UK, take it out in cash in Thailand and then send it back to the UK? I have a feeling I'll be greasing the pockets of many bankers with this set of transactions.

I trust some wise TVF members can help me cut down on fattening these bankers.

Yes indeed, I can help with the first part - getting the cash here for £9.50 plus about 2.5% in exchange fees (so about £60 for £2000 transfer, nothing is cheap when it comes to bankers!!), you will have to check if your Thai bank charges you this end.

You need to have a Halifax basic account in UK, if you can't get one get a close friend or family member to open one (go online, your credit can be completely shot, they have to by law give you this account!) they will recieve forms in the post take about 3 weeks max to set up then they can do the transfer for you from this account. Hope this helps

[itsmeewan]

First point. OK, I use Bank of Scotland / Halifax (19.50) per transaction, I too had the tellermake a mistake by the teller of sending it in THB instead of GBP, I went onto the Bangkok Bank website for that day & found out the rate that I would have got and calculated what I had lost by the error in the transaction.

Met with the Manager of my branch and discussed with him about the teller mistake and he refunded me the difference.

Another way to send money overseas is to give your Gf/wife to be an Nationwide ATM card and just transfer money into it, at present only Bank of Ayuttaya are not charging fees for foreign ATM withdrawal. Limited to 15,000 baht per day unless you have multiple accounts.

Second point If this is the only the first time you have sent money over to Thailand I am suspecting you have not known your gf/ wife to be long, this is probably the more serious thing.

Question. Would you get married to a farang in Farangland with her only knowing her a short period of time?

Would you believe it even the Bank of Ayuttaya have now started to charge 150THB too!!

[theoldgit]

Yes indeed, I can help with the first part - getting the cash here for £9.50 plus about 2.5% in exchange fees (so about £60 for £2000 transfer, nothing is cheap when it comes to bankers!!), you will have to check if your Thai bank charges you this end.

My experience with The Halifax was slightly different, as I said before I have only been charged £9.50 per transaction and as I asked for GBP to be sent I didn't have to pay any exchange fees, in fact I got a better rate this end. so £9.50 was the total cost from the UK.

I think I had to pay a charge this end of about 120 Baht.

[Nigelmartin]

I went into Bangkok Bank last week and transferred 600,00baht using my Nationwide ATM, no charges either end. Got 54.6baht to UK Pound. However, I believe after the 1ST June there will be a charge of 0.8%