steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve Yelvington) (02/20/90)
[In article <2008@laura.UUCP>,
klute@heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Rainer Klute) writes ... ]
> This raises the question how much fee I had to pay if I would
> receive a cheque or money order from a foreign country (here:
> anything outside Germany). Recently I got an Euro-Cheque from
> Austria made out in DM (Deutsche Mark) and I had no additional
> costs with it. Probably it is different with cheques from, say,
> Canada or the United States. I shall try to find out and post
> the results here.
The expense comes on the sender's end.
A couple of years ago, on Rainer's recommendation, I bought the DRI
Resource Editor from Merlin Computer GMBH, Eschborn, FRG. The price was
22.50 DM, which converted to about a third of the U.S. retail price of the
Kuma resource editor, the only one available here at the time.
Merlin asked for a Eurocheque in Deutsche Marks. It cost me 12 dollars or
so in service charges just to get a bank here to issue the check! And I
had to wait almost an hour for this "service."
Since then I've found that you can buy International Reply Coupons, which
can be converted into local stamps, at any post office. They're the
optimum solution for most small exchanges.
(Actually, my wife and her mother routinely buy perfumes, tulip bulbs,
etc., from companies in France and Holland that accept personal checks
made out in U.S. currency. Those firms apparently have no trouble cashing
the U.S. checks.)
> Oh, and there is still the very cheap possibility to put some
> banknotes into an envelope and hand it over to the snail mail
> for delivery. Obviously this is not the most secure procedure
> but for $15 (the Arcgsh Shareware fee I ask for) the risk may
> be bearable.
Absolutely right -- although I think $15 is a rather steep tax on being
too lazy to type the commands to ARC. :-)
--
Steve Yelvington at the (thin ice today*) lake in Minnesota
UUCP path: ... umn-cs.cs.umn.edu!thelake!steve
*16 cars through the ice so far this year! Yes, you, too, can
have that sinking feeling....klute@heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Rainer Klute) (02/23/90)
I think I have found out a way how to transfer money from America to Germany with a minimum of additional costs. If you would like to send me money - say $15 for my Arcgsh - you can proceed as follows: - Get one of your normal cheque forms (no Eurocheque or something like that needed) and fill in the amount of money you want to transfer. Now comes something very important: Write the amount in your local currency, say US$ or Cdn$ or whatever else it might be! Do _not_ make the cheque out in DM (Deutsche Mark)! - Put the cheque into an envelope and send it to me by mail. What shall I do with the cheque? I shall not take it to a bank to receive the money. They will charge me at least about DM 17 (ca. US$ 10)! Instead: I shall send it to my Postgiroamt. They will perform something called "simplified foreign cheque draw in" (my attempt to translate office german into english, sorry). This costs only DM 0.80! Summary: Minimum additional costs for the sender (standard cheque form, envelope, postage), minimum costs for the receiver (DM 0.80). Who is willing to try it out? Dipl.-Inform. Rainer Klute klute@heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de Univ. Dortmund, IRB klute@unido.uucp, klute@unido.bitnet Postfach 500500 |)|/ ...uunet!mcvax!unido!klute D-4600 Dortmund 50 |\|\ Tel.: +49 231 755-4663
kjetilho@ifi.uio.no (Kjetil Torgrim Homme) (02/23/90)
Rainer Klute writes: > What shall I do with the cheque? I shall not take it to a > bank to receive the money. They will charge me at least > about DM 17 (ca. US$ 10)! Instead: I shall send it to my > Postgiroamt. They will perform something called "simplified > foreign cheque draw in" (my attempt to translate office > german into english, sorry). This costs only DM 0.80! I agree with him that this is an easy way of transfering money. However, if both parties have postal giro accounts (or whatever they are called in English), this is absolutely free, and the currency of the cheque doesn't matter at all. Even the postage is free! Even if the receiver hasn't got an account, the fee is only 1/5 of what a bank charges. He will then receive a cheque from a well-reputed bank, like Lloyds in the UK, I believe. I've always wondered why payment by postal giro isn't more popular. Isn't this system available in UK, USA, France etc.? I know that it is in the Scandinavian countries. To sum up - IF have_account%=TRUE THEN PRINT account_number% : REM We all benefit! ELSE IF FNsystem_available THEN PROCget_account PRINT account_number% ENDIF ENDIF (Pascal-, C-, BCPL-enthusiasts etc. will have to mail me to get an alternate version of the above code :-) BTW - I'm sorry, but I won't try to send you any money, because I don't even know what arcgsh is! Perhaps that's self-evident to other people... :-) /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Kjetil T. Homme // "I always read between the lies" // // Norway // (Goodman Ace) // ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
t19@nikhefh.nikhef.nl (Geert J v Oldenborgh) (02/23/90)
The cheapest easiest way to get money from the US to Europe: put the dollar bills in an envelop and put a stamp on it. I know enough people going to/coming from the States and East European countries to make them useful. Geert Jan van Oldenborgh (From the Netherlands, the country with the smallest number of credit cards and lowest cheque usage of the developed world)
chad@norge.enet.dec.com (02/23/90)
When I lived in Germany I was told I could deposit my US checks from my private bank if I had an account at the bank and I was willing to wait until the check had cleared the US (and a very small fee). It was to be handled as a "Nur zur Verrechnung" check -- I didn't get Bargeld (sorry, cash), the money had to be deposited in the account when the check cleared. Of course, I could then go in and withdraw it. Chad chad@norge.dec.com DEC has no opinions! ----------------------------------------------
qralph@dna.lth.se (Ralph Haglund) (02/24/90)
Hi, This question about payment to other countries - I think it is mostly the feeling that "this MUST be complicated"... OK, sending big amounts is something else, but sending small amounts must be easiest to do cash! All of us netters are rather international, right?! So we can always use cash in foreign denominatons. Dollars go everywhere, DM and Swiss Francs go everywhere. Don't make life more complicated than necessary!
swklassen@tiger.waterloo.edu (Steven W. Klassen) (02/26/90)
In article <1990Feb23.184405.26406@lth.se> qralph@dna.lth.se (Ralph Haglund) writes: >easiest to do cash! All of us netters are rather international, right?! So >we can always use cash in foreign denominatons. Dollars go everywhere, DM and >Swiss Francs go everywhere. Don't make life more complicated than necessary! If you are going to send cash why not go down to your local bank and get the cash in the denomination of the country you are going to send it to? Whenever I send cash to the U.S., I send it in U.S. dollars so that the receiver does not have to convert from my Canadian ones. That way the receiver gets his cash in a form he can use without having to worry about things like exchange rates. Steven W. Klassen +-----------------------------+ Computer Science Major | Support the poor...buy fur! | University of Waterloo +-----------------------------+
chad@norge.enet.dec.com (Chad Leigh) (02/26/90)
I'd keep cash payments in dollars only. It is very difficult for the average Joe here in the US to either get foreign cash or to change it -- unlike in Europe, where every bank will do both buy and sell foreign currency. Only the bigger banks, airports, big-city banks will buy and sell foreign curency in the US (my experience in the Boston area) without a lot of hassle. Chad chad@norge.dec.com DEC has no opinions! ---------------------------------------------
rbutterworth@watmath.waterloo.edu (Ray Butterworth) (02/28/90)
No one is likely to end up in jail over this, but I should point out that in many countries, it is illegal to send cash through the mail. The intent is to remove most of the incentive for mail theft.