has anybody in the uk ordered from schwerter?

[RosieC]

Originally Posted by AnonYMouse

Off topic!!!

I'm curious about e-commerce in the EU. Do the banks/cc issuer/paypal charge exchange fees going from € to £?

Paypal use a 'retail exchange rate' (set by a separate financial institution) which builds the charge/fee into the exchange rate. How does PayPal calculate currency conversion/ exchange rate?

Usually when you buy something with Paypal it's converted to £ immediately you make the transaction and most times you see the £ amount on the paypal screen before you confirm the transaction.

If you log in to paypal to see the statement you see the € amount (or $ amount) followed by transactions converting it to £ followed by the £ amount taken from your credit card. You never win on the exchange because whichever way it goes, because of the built in fee and because it's taken from your account/card immediately in £. (You can only win on exchange rates when buy when the exchange rate is one way, hold the money in the other currency for a while, then sell when it's swung the other way enough to cover the fees. Even buying money to go on holiday they charge fees for the exchange, quite often the fee is again built into the exchange rate.)

I've done credit card a couple of times and I think they used to do something similar, but apparently in the last year or so it's changed to have a separate fee.

The disadvantage with a credit card is that you don't know how much you will actually be charged in £ until it appears on your statement. It uses the exchange rate and fee at the time at the time it's applied to your account, not from the time you made the purchase (which can be several days). You have to confirm the transaction based on the € or $ amount and a rough guess based on current exchange rates as to what you will actually be charged.

I've never used transactions direct from the bank to pay in another currency. Often European vendors charge an additional fee for such transactions so it's not the best way to pay.

The other thing that has to be born in mind with such things is taxes. Buying from the EU I don't believe we have to think about this due to agreements between the EU countries, but buying from somewhere like the USA (not talking orchids here) you have to pay the appropriate UK tax. I bought software the other day and we worked out the rough exchange rate from $ to £ but when I specified I was in the UK during the purchase process they showed me the £ price and it was about 20% higher than expected, the 20% being itemised out as the tax (which they had added because I'm in the UK, the software company have an office in Germany and my transaction went through them and they handled the tax). However not all suppliers do that, and that doesn't necessarily mean you don't need to pay it.