Transferring small amounts of money??

[nickydwuk]

We have booked our temporary accomodation in NZ and they want us to pay a weeks rent up front. What is the best way to do this? I could send them a cheque in GBP but it would depend on the exchange rate whether I sent enough, too much or too little. Or I could make a payemnt to their bank account. If I did this what is the best way to do it? Any ideas????

[ebianca]

Hey Nicky.

Whhen we paid for ours we paid our deposit by Western Union (would depend if who you were paying has an account with them or not) which was fairly easy and cheap.
We paid up the rest of the balance by bank transfer from our normal UK bank account into their bank account (you will need a swift code for this). Depends what bank you are with to how much they charge but think it is about ?25 and you can tell them how much in NZ$ you need to send.

Beth

[keeweegal]

Nicky, I'm with Beth on this one. I've used my UK bank account to transfer funds to a US account & it worked fine. They charge more the quicker they send it, so if you send it in plenty of time, it doesn't cost as much

Also, I'm pretty sure a NZ bank won't accept a UK cheque.

Have a think about opening a NZ bank account from here, although I'm not sure you'd be able to transfer money from it until you're actually over there & have activated it, but it might be worth looking into. They can open them quickly from here. I'm looking at ASB (who have an office in London) and National Bank.

KG

[Taffy]

Originally Posted by keeweegal

Also, I'm pretty sure a NZ bank won't accept a UK cheque.

They will, and will work out the exchange rate when you pay it in, so no way of telling if you've sent enough. If it's over a certain amount ($5000 I think) it can take 30 days to clear though!

Western Union is good but very insecure - there's no comeback if you get ripped off!

So yeah, bank transfer is the safest option, but you get the worst rate of exchange plus around 25 quid fee for the pleasure.

[nickydwuk]

I think bank transfer will be our only option for this. It is such a small amount ($490) We have a savings account with Westpac (nothing in it yet though) but I think if we tranfer small amounts to that bank it will cost us just as much as the large money tarnsfer companies (Hifx etc...) would charge a lot for such a small amount. I will find out on Monday when our banks open.

[keeweegal]

HiFX will negotiate. We transferred 5GBP with them & played a couple off against each other. (I realise this is a bigger amount than you're talking about but its still small stuff to them). Maybe worth a phone call to check them out? In this financial climate, you never know. I'd also try to negotiate with your bank - you've got nothing to lose!

[ebianca]

We set up an NZ bank account with Bank of NZ at one of the expos we went to. It was set up as a savings account that we could transfer money to before we got here although we didn't bother.
When we got to NZ we just went to the local BNZ branch and they added a cheque account to the savings account and sent us our EFTPOS cards- no problems, really easy.

[Ginabridget]

When I've sent over little bits of money I've used a Bankers Draft in $NZ, although once I did get ripped off by the bank and was given tourist rates rather than bank rates for the exchange rate. I went to get one the other day and it was going to be about £18, hmmm, hold-on it may have been £18 for bankers draft and £25 for a telegraphic transfer....I could have that mixed up, I didn't do it in the end because I only wanted $100 so it wasn't worth it.

I'm going to have to send over a deposit for our holiday let when we go, so let me know which way works out cheaper for you and I'll probably do the same.

[alan&moyra]

Hi Nicky,

Can you not pay by CC ?

[nickydwuk]

They don't accept credit cards - but I have got it sorted now. Someone from another forum (I know - traitor I hear you shout ) who lives in Chch has paid it for me and I have deposited the money in their UK bank account.