Hi,

Paid in a cheque from my UK LTSB account into my Barclays.es account. Easy and painless and fantastic rate with no charges from either bank!

£2,000.00 > 2.451,06€

Wow that's pretty good!

Surprising, because Barclays is reported to be the single most expensive bank in the world for inter-currency transfers. Horror stories include exchange rates like 1:1 when extracting cash from Barclays accounts using Barclays machines.

I use Santander (and get similar results) But your experience is encouraging!

That is good, though if you'd used HIFX you would have got €2,478.71.

Just think, you could have spent the extra €27 in M&S online ...

No true. You have been duped with their over optimistic rate as shown on their home page which does indeed show £2,000 buys 2.478,71€.

I just logged into my own HiFX account: £2,000 would buy 2,438€ plus HiFX charge an additional £9.00 transfer fee. i.e. £2,009 buys 2.438€.

I think you will find all are optimistic and don't tell you the transaction charge at the beginning, but like the charges by UK banks for international withdrawals should be taken into account.

`

In my case there was no charge by either UK or Spanish bank.