Exchange rates on board

[samjane92]

Quick one is it better to change euros onboard or before I go at Tesco, post office etc?

[jeanlyon]

Definitely before you go. The rate on board is not good.

[Thejuggler]

Disagree about the ship rates not being good as we found the on ship rates as good if not better than UK, but neither were as competitive as ATMs and credit card.

[samjane92]

Going on Ventura next week if anyone has experience with that?

[Thejuggler]

Both our P&O trips were on Ventura. The issue is things can change. Unless you can find out from someone who has just returned you have no idea if the on board rate is competitive at the moment. It certainly was for us on both our trips.

 

The other way to look at it is unless you are spending thousands a few percent difference between exchange rates isn't worth losing sleep over. On £100 it may cost you the price of half a glass of wine.

[rickpo]

Is that the top half or the bottom half?

 

Rick.

[clivep]

Our experience of P&O has been that they take about 10% commission in each of the buy and sell exchange rates (so you'd lose more than 20% in total on any unused foreign currency that you sell back to them).

 

Using our Nationwide debit card we get charged 2% commission + £1 ATM fee for withdrawing foreign currency from a cash machine abroad.

 

It's convenient and cheaper to use P&O for £10's worth of foreign currency for incidentals but otherwise it's the ATM every time.

[jeanlyon]

For goodness sake. I got 1.21 to the pound from the high street for euros - on the ship it was 1.15!! Agree ATM is better still.

Edited August 7, 2014 by jeanlyon

[Corfe Mixture]

If you can you should use either a Nationwide Select or Halifax Clarity credit card.

 

Just checked on line and on 27th July, I made a purchase of €60.45 on my Nationwide credit card which was converted at 1.261477 and billed as £47.92.

 

My most recent transaction (buying €46.92 of diesel this Tuesday) was converted at 1.25454545 and is showing as £37.40 on my credit card account.

 

Those figures are achieved net figures.

 

There are no commission or hidden costs.

 

Can't really speak for the current cash rate, as I send cash in bulk to my French bank account, once a year, using a firm called HiFX, who give me a rate around 2% worse than my UK credit cards are then offering (but I can't use my credit card for everything and do need to have some cash in my pocket).

 

The last time I used a high street source the worst rate by far was the Post Office. They claimed to be commission free, but they built a massive spread into the exchange rate which mde them very expensive. At the time, I shopped around and found that Thos Cook offered me the best rate on the High Street, though that was a couple of years ago.

 

Nationwide DEBIT - NOT CREDIT card rates for ATM are fine provided you are withdrawing enough to make the £1 fixed charge insignificant, but if you are only drawing out say €30, the fixed charge pushes your net commission up to around 6%

Edited August 7, 2014 by Corfe Mixture