On Mar 19, 2006, at 6:17, Margot Walker wrote:
That $1 difference is the spread between the cost to the bank/Visa and the price from the bank/Visa to you.
Nope. At least, I don't think so. The difference came from the rate of exchange -- the Currency Converter posted a better one -- for me -- than the PayPal used. And I didn't use the Visa option. At least, I don't think so :) My PayPal account is the simplest one I could set up and, when I pay with PayPal, the recipient gets an e-check; I can't even do a "direct bank transfer" (the way one of my payees wanted). The deduction doesn't come through as a Visa charge; the money is withdrawn from my ("dedicated") bank account.
Cindy (Rusak) wrote:
Tamara, I think you would find that the exchange rate that Visa would charge you would be about the same as what Paypal charges you.
That might be so... There's always the risk, when charging to Visa in a another country, that, by the time the bill arrives, the value of dollar has gone down instead of up and that you're paying more than you'd expected to. But this transaction was supposed to be _current_, not some days delayed (where I have no means of checking, not knowing which day the payment was posted, and/or not being able to find the market quotes for that day). And the _current_ rate of exchange which showed up on the Currency Converter was _not_ the same one that PayPal had used.
When we first moved to the US and checked into using our US visa cards for foreign currency purchases the 'hidden' fees were somewhere about 2-1/2%
Currency conversion _rates_ and currency conversion _fees_ are two separate issues.
My Visa -- I think it varies from bank to bank rather than country to country, at least in US -- does not, at the moment, charge me any fee for international transactions, though I expect it to, any minute :) A Visa card from another bank (which I dropped about 18months ago) wanted to charge -- at a 1.5% of transaction value -- which is when I dropped it (it also charged a yearly fee, which my local bank's Visa doesn't. It also gave me frequent flier miles, which the local bank's card doesn't. In the long run, with frequent flier miles hard to redeem, and me not flying all that often, and having to send in the payments instead of handing in a check at the bank... It wasn't paying for itself, so I ditched it)
Conversion _rate_ is something else again. It's when one institution "interprets" your dollar as being worth half a GB pound, and another one says it's worth three quarters (these are not real numbers <g>). It's when (in Poland), you get 3.50zloty for your greenback in one hole-in-the-wall exchange point/bank, and 4zloty in another. _Both_ places will charge you a fee for the service (usually a flat fee, like a bank charges for withdrawing money from an ATM at a machine that doesn't belong to your bank). But, in the first instance, you get 35-1 for your $10, while at the other you get 40-1, and the difference keeps building up the more you change.
Clay wrote:
I got a number of emails from Kloeppelbuch: the first thanking me for opening an account, the next confirming my order, the third telling me the book was being prepared for shipment, and the fourth telling me that the book had been shipped. But I did not get multiple confirmations with different order numbers, so Tamara - you may have two books on their way to you.
That one got straightened out. I hope :) I got 3 more mailings today -- two (one for each order) -- asking me if I wanted two books or one. And one -- in response to my original "squeal" -- to say that I've been charged for one copy only. I have not received any of the other messages you mention (of course, my book couldn't have been shipped over the weekend, so that's still in store <g>).
Another thing that got straightened out is the matter of credit-card payments to kloeppelbuch... They do not take plastic directly (too expensive), but they _can_ get paid via PayPal Visa arrangement. Which had not been an option offered to me by PayPal, either... :)
As far as PayPal goes, I also keep a separate account for PayPal to access.
Where do you think I got the idea? <VBG> Jacqui (Southworth) sat with me for a couple of hours supervising my subscription steps (she was the one who "made me do it"<g>), but the inspired idea of keeping my personal and PayPal finances separate came from you...
then I checked an on-line currency conversion table, and noticed that while the dollar has weakened about a penny a day for the last week, it was never as low as the rate that PayPal was using. So they're making money there...
Nobody's in banking for love (except love of money)... :)
And when I read the fine print, I saw that the conversion fee is paid by the recipient.
's true; I forgot. When I first set up my PayPal account, I set it up as a _seller_ , to be able to peddle the 2-Pair Inventions abroad. That's why I didn't sign for the Visa option (too expensive for a single item). But the 3 international transactions I did do via PayPal as a seller (hardly worth the brain effort of setting the whole thing up <g>), we had to figure out how much _extra_ I'd have to charge not come out short... It never happened -- due to the fluctuating _rate_ of exchange, but it came close. Expensive for one side or the other, and proftable for the bank (in this instance, PayPal)...
Still... PayPal _is_ a convenient "bridge" in the matter of international movement of money in _small amounts_ . Last time I looked (4yrs ago), my bank charged a flat $35 fee for shifting money from US to Poland, irrespective of amount (I wanted to move $100. Forget it <g>)...
And, on this upbeat note, I wish y'all good night. -- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
