UK purchase fees
lindans
Posts: 99
I live in the UK everytime I purchase from Daz I get hit with a (NON GB purchase fee I think at 3%) from my bank, is there anyway around this?
Post edited by lindans on
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But a gift card? At least you may only pay it once. There is also the option to pay with amazon pay. I don't know if that will cause you extra fees though or whether it is available in the uk.
I would agree that buying a gift card for store credit especially when they offer a 15%-20% discount would be the best way to mitigate the taxes/fees
I thought about using the paypal option to pay because when I buy stuff from Adam I pay in £'s but I expect there's still a currency conversion charge built in somewhere, banks will use any trick to stitch you up.
Steve.
Just wondering if, I upload money to Paypal and pay directly from there if that would work?
It is an exchange rate fee because DAZ sell in Dollars so there isn't any way around it. Buying through PayPal isn't a good idea as their exchange rate is much higher than the banks, or at least higher than my bank's.
you could try entering the carrara render challenge and win some daz monies
Your bank is charging you for the exchange rate. Using PayPal to pay or most credit cards won't charge you an extra exchange rate fee. Mine does whenever I pay for something overseas from US.
I use PayPal from the UK, and while the conversion rate is not great, I don't think the penalty is as high as 3%.
Regards,
Richard.
If you have US$ money in your Paypal account, you won't get hit by the conversion, but if you only have sterling, then you will. Paypal's rate is higher than the (my) bank's, but not by a lot.
Example: I get paid for Daz sales in US$, so if that money stays in my Paypal account, and I buy from the store with it, I don't get charged for conversion. But if I took the money out and then paid by card, I'd get hit twice: once by Paypal for converting into sterling and also by the bank for converting back to dollars.
Use paypal and giftcards
Buying a gift card is what I do to cut down (a bit) on the £>$ bank fees, especially when there's a sale going where I'm likely to make regular small purchases. Instead of getting a bank fees hit each time, I just have to pay once. After the card's converted to $$$ as store credit, there's nothing more to pay apart above the actual cost of my cart, and I can freely make as many small-$ purchases as I want.
On my last two purchases the exchange rate from the bank was $1.29 plus the 3% conversion fee on the total amount, which was £0.86 and £0.06 pence. The pound at the moment in the money markets is sitting at $1.29, what is the exchange rate using Paypal to see how much the difference is?
Whenever I order something outside the eurozone, my "brick and mortar" bank takes a proportionate fee plus a percentage for the conversion.
I opened an account at N26, but I think it's the same with every neobank, essentially for this kind of transaction : there's no additional fee, just the bare conversion.
I bought a gift card the other day using paypal, but I didn't pay attention to the rate that day. In the past when I have it is usually around $0.03 less than the Banks rate (so about $1.26) - and no conversion charge. Swings and round-a-bouts.
I haven't used PayPal for over a month now, so my idea of the exchange rate will be out of date, but end of Jan it was $1.2685 to the £.
I had a look online and as far as I can make out they use the market rate -3% but they also have a conversion fee that ranges from 2.5% up to 4.00%. It is hard to get a logical explanation on their website as, according to various other sources, they aren't free with the information :)
I think it's likely that they play the money markets and futures market to get the best rate they can and then top slice on that to get the percentage they want. Generally, I have felt that I got a better rate with them than my credit card or debit card. The worst way I came across was years ago when I had to do an international money order via my bank. It was a $Can30 bill for which I was charged £26.40. That still rankles. Changed bank as a result, though.
Have you ever tried getting to actually talk with anyone there. I am trying to find out how to downgrade my business account to a personal one, as they want a mobile phone number for me to carry on using the business one. I gave up mobile phones when I gave up real life work.(or it gave up with ma and handed me a redundancy notice 3 years before retirement age.)
Even when in Tenerife using my debit card I get the full market rate on the day of the transaction plus the 3% conversion fee. PayPal use a lower rate and also charge a conversion fee.
https://www.paypal.com/uk/smarthelp/article/how-does-paypal-calculate-currency-conversion--exchange-rate-faq1835
I got an e-mail about that the other day. Although after careful reading it didn't say I had to have a mobile (which I don't want), just that it would be "more convenient" than a landline for using online banking. Maybe yours is the same?