Money transfer from US to UK

[jayne]

Hi, I wonder if any of you could advise me. We have some potential guests from the US wishing to stay at our apartment in Kalkan next year. They are keen to pay the deposit but I'm not sure what is the easiest and least costly way to transfer cash into my UK account . An ideas?

Linkback: https://www.enjoykalkan.com/forum/index.php?topic=8890.0

[KalkanPosh]

Apart from gıving them your bank details, we've used Western Union and Moneygram safely before. But there is a cost- look them up online for details :-)

[Charlie]

We had guests from US stay last year. I paid bank charges of around £25 when their money was lodged to my account and they had to pay something similar to their bank to transfer it.  We've just had another request for this year from US guests and I'm not sure what would be best to save both parties money.

[Cosetta]

We have the reverse problem.  No UK account so we have to pay a fortune when guests send money from the UK to our dollar or euro accounts.  We even had a Scottish bank charge us for both the sender/client fee and our bank charged us the receiving fee plus the intermediary bank fee plus the exchange rate percentage.  Total charges amounted to 82 GBP for that single transfer!  We haven't found any way to reduce these fees other than to open a pound (or dollar) account at our Turkish bank.  The Turkish wire fees are less than those of the banks in the UK and the US. 

You can also consider setting up a Paypal account and let them pay you by credit card.  That is about 3 - 3.25% plus the exchange rate loss.

[jayne]

Hi, thanks for your replies. In the end our US guests paid via Paypal but as Cosetta says this does cost, in this case approx. £15 to transfer £200. We have agreed to share the charge when it comes to the balance being paid. It's annoying but there doesn't seem to be any way around it.

[Brandongirl]

Hi,

I need some advice. We are thinking of renting our apartment and advertising on one of the German lettings web sites. Has anyone had experience of these sites and if so how did they get the money transferred to the UK without incurring large fees? Likewise how were things like breakage deposits managed and refunded without incurring large fees?

Also, has anyone got any recommendations re managing lets? Some of the fees we have been quoted seem rather high and include services we do not require such as out of season months management. Again any advice as to what are reasonable charges and recommendations would be appreciated.

BG