stormywhether

Hey!

Since we got our visa the day before Valentine's Day (hurrah!) we've swung into action. Or rather the OH has, while I attempt to extricate myself from a temporary commitment to the rat race.

Invariably at this time people have posers of an Australian nature. These concern money. Here:

1. Is there a bank recognised in Australia as a 'leader' in great customer service, that offers good accounts with benefits like unlimited or loads of ATM withdrawals for free/cheap?

2. We're on a 475 (which is technically classed as 'temporary') visa. I don't know how we stand regarding tax and stuff, since this isn't PR. BUT - how has anyone else who has moved to Oz, handled their currency exchange? Is there a wise way to do it - and a decent company to use to make the exchange from £ to AUD?

Thanks a billion!

Stormy

marco121068

I can recommend OzForex. Had no trouble at all with them and usually got a very good rate.

RCoight

No. You will find threads on here with good and horror stories for all the banks.

Use somebody like Ozforex (as already mentioned) or HiFx. Every transfer I've done I've found their rates to be better than the banks.

lastone

1. We're with Citibank over here. No withdrawl fees if your salaries are paid in each month and come to over
$2500 (check this figure).
We opened a sterling current account in the UK with a AUD savings acount linked to it. We put our money that we had converted at the time in this and withdrew it and paid for things with cash (not a bad thing) over here, until we got our Citibank account sorted over here.
Overall, not a bad service. Took a little bit longer to get our cards, but apart from that no complaints.
Usual stuff comes with it : personal banker, internet and telephone banking etc

2. We used Hifx as their service and return of calls was better. Really good.

stormywhether

That sounds great. Can you tell me more about this: which bank, and what specifically you asked the bank for in terms of the account type, etc?

Thanks!

Stormy

lastone

It was with Citibank. We phoned them and told them what we needed, they told us what they had.

One of the things that attracted us was that we could do sameday electronic tranfers from the UK AUD account to our OZ account, though when we tried to it would only let us transfer 22,000 at time online. We did over the phone and it took 4 days to clear. It wasn't a problem, but is something to bear in mind when you go with them, although I don't think it's much different with any of the other banks

http://www.citibank.co.uk/personal/b...?merchant=citi

Try the link and you can see the dirfferent sorts of accounts

hitchw

i invest money globally and for any currency exchanges i always use RationalFX, £-oz$ quote me very tight and money on account there in 2 days... can give you my dealers details if you want, sure he will look after you.
Will

stormywhether

Awesome - please do fella! I can't seem to PM you - but you can me! Would really appreciate it.

Thanks a million!

Dave