sunnydays

Considering the ways of returning a large amount of Euros from Spain to the UK we decided to use our bankinter cheque book and deposit it with Barclays in our Euro account. The Euro was weak and a month or so would matter. The English speaking ebankinter people on two separate occasions advised me that its the "clearing" bank that makes the charges on a deposit cheque, "we don't charge you anything" one of them said.
Surprise, surprise, on arrival in our Barclays account we found that they had subracted £308.00 as "Correspondence", Barclays had charged us £16.00 which is very good.
I rang the Spanish bank and they promised to check with Madrid and return my call..........no response after almost a week.

Would you trust your money with a bank like this?

Nige

I have just looked up the Bankinter page dealing with Commisions and charges for International transfers. The charges are clearly shown. https://www.ebankinter.com/www/en-es...omisiones.html
It is not unusual for any Spanish Bank to charge for this type of transaction. Transferring between Bankinter accounts is free.
Are you certain the people you spoke to understood exactly what you were doing ?

dazzle

Internet transfers from my Bankinter Account into accounts with other Spanish Banks cost just 1 euro.

sunnydays

[QUOTE=Nige]I have just looked up the Bankinter page dealing with Commisions and charges for International transfers. The charges are clearly shown. https://www.ebankinter.com/www/en-es...omisiones.html
It is not unusual for any Spanish Bank to charge for this type of transaction. Transferring between Bankinter accounts is free.
Are you certain the people you spoke to understood exactly what you were doing

Transfers, bank cheques etc and the like do come with a charge, I accept that and its always a percentage rate, however when you write a personal cheque of that bank and deposit it in another bank, its the receiving bank or as they say the "clearing" bank that asks for charges.
I discussed this with the polite English speaking telephone banking chap from Bankinter and he specifically said that their bank would not charge me for this service, I even orderred the cheque book from him at the time.
Through ebankinter I have paid bills and used their internet service and been impressed, but this episode has cheesed me off.

Nige

[QUOTE=sunnydays] As a matter of interest, how did the charge made by Bankinter when you used your cheque to pay into barclays compare with the cost of transferring by using the internet service ?

sunnydays

[QUOTE=Nige][QUOTE=sunnydays]

As a matter of interest, how did the charge made by Bankinter when you used your cheque to pay into barclays compare with the cost of transferring by using the internet service ?

You can only use the internet transfer within Spain, the telephone banking system staff can do it for you to send abroad and it is about 0.5%, plus extras. A cheaper way is to have them make a banker cheque which works out at 0.125% if I remember rightly, but then you don't have to lose it!
The cheapest way of course is to collect the cash and travel with friends!
I almost used the "Moneycorp" company who have their own account in Bankinter but the rate was not good at the time, at least then I'd be able be able to transfer the money between the accounts for free.
What I suspect is that the bank have charged me 0.5% and called it a transfer, the Barclays staff here in the UK say that the Spanish banks do this sort of thing..........a bit underhand I reckon.
You can understand why the local folk like to pay for things in Cash and queue up to pay Utility bills, cheaper in the long run, maybe thats why their houses have security bars on their windows....he he..

Nige

Yes they do like queuing but we must not forget that Spain, especially Andalucia, was very much the outpost of Europe but they are catching up fast.
For example, Banco Santander buying ABBEY and Alonso winning the Formula 1
The average wage /income for a local Spaniard in Andalucia must be around 1000 Euros a month so every penny counts and much of the economy does still revolve around cash.
To pay utility bills is straightforward if you have a bank account in Spain in my experience. They do have excellent Direct Debit system. I use BBVA and find them excellent and their Internet banking is good. No faults so far. I even topped up my Spanish mobile using the online account very quickly !
And as for security bars. They are cheaper than alarm systems and possibly more of a deterrent?