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British Currency Alert


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For those non-Brits who may have some British currency left over from another trip and may not yet know this, the UK fairly recently withdrew the £5 and £10 paper notes, replacing them with polymer notes. So if you have those old 5s and 10s, you won't be able to use them now. You can exchange them at the Bank of England in London, and people are reporting that some other banks will still take them (they apparently don't have to). A new £20 note will be issued in 2020, so this trip would be a good time to spend any of those you may still have around.

 

Judith

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  • 1 month later...

Shoot! I have about £175 of UK currency and no plans to visit the UK anytime soon. I already got screwed on about £5 worth of old pound coins too!

 

What is the timeline for cutting off exchange of the old notes?

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On our British Isles cruise earlier this month, we received the old one pound coin from a few shops as part of coinage change. Luckily, a member of our party lives in England, spotted it immediately and spoke to the cashier. In one shop, the person operating the till tried to pass a Bank of Scotland 5 pound note to me - and we were not in Scotland.

 

I finally decided to use a credit card no matter how small the purchase. This is the first time we have ever had an issue with currency in the many years we have traveled outside of the USA.

 

When you are getting off the ship in Southampton and heading to baggage claim, there's a large clear bin in which you can toss your unwanted currency. Many flights also pass envelopes for currency donations, too.

 

Darcy

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