Foreign Money Transfers - Rip-Off Barclays - again

[Boomin33]

In case anyone has had a previous experience or to warn others... thought I'd share.

I sent over some money the other day from the Bank of America to Barclays. $'s to £'s

Went into a UK branch & enquired into fees and rates of exchange, though probably foolishly didn't go as far as to lock one down on this wire-transfer. I did the same with Bank of America.

Bank of America charged $45 to send and Barclays £6 to recieve. Both said that there were no other "hidden" charges.

Sent it on Wednesday and hits my account on Wednesday.... err £1,550 short of what, near as I can tell was the going rate on the day.

I was planning on 1.48 - 1.49 and they did the deal at 1.55 for some reason?!?

I've lodged a complaint with - funny enough Barclays have a dedicated Complaints department for International Wire Transfers... it sounded hopping busy when I called.

Another Systemic Barclays policy of trying to rip-off customers at any and every possible opportunity????

and a complaints department to deal with the people that actually notice that they'd been done?

[Boomin33]

Nice gal called me back. It's been escalated to level 2.

Fact: Banks Levy on all foreign exchange transfers except for large corporate clients.

She said she gets calls like this all day every day. That Branches don't really understand international transfers and the advice they should be giving customers on Levy's the bank imposes.
Saying she will ask her manager... but I may need to take this to the Financial Ombudsman.. equivalent of small claims court.

I think that if some lawyer did a class action suit against the banks for this exceedingly high charge ( similar to bank over-draft charges, but much smaller scale ).. a lot of money would be going back to customers that got stung badly... no judge could view this as a fair fee for service?


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Result.

maybe they didn't like my threats of escalating this to a court case and to the office of Fair trade for an investigation.

They are going to credit my account £1300 today. They must figure that £250 is the maximum a intermediary would view as a reasonable charge. Luckily they agreed in the first call that my branch "should have advised" to call Barclays treasury for an exact rate.

In the future will only use HIFX or FXGlobalTransfer or the like!

[NSXGB]

I just transferred some money the other way across the pond to the Bank of America. . . Cost me nothing. . .
Wife works for the bank :)
I was told that otherwise it would have cost £28? Maybe different for business transfers? Still a lot of money for pressing a few buttons.