From: rbs@uk.ac.ed.aisb (Robert Scott)
Newsgroups: rec.travel
Subject: Re: Europe - Strategies for dealing with exchange rates, money etc.
Date: 27 Aug 92 17:59:51 GMT
Reply-To: rbs@aisb.ed.ac.uk
Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland


In article <l9njv5INNsfq@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> sriram@cremona.Eng.Sun.COM (Sriram Ramachandran) writes:

   I'm looking for hints on dealing with currency exchange on a prolonged 
   trip to Europe. A few that I've gathered so far:

   * Banks usually have better exchange rates.

Better exchange rates than what?
The worst exchange rates usually come from travel agents and
independant money exchanges.
They usually have a large commission.
One of the worst I've seen is Thomas Cook who seen to have expensive
money exchanges in many European railway stations (and probably airports).

Banks do have better rates than the above.
Domestic banks usually have better rates than commercial banks.

   * Credit Cards: 
     There seem to two schools of thought on using credit cards. One that says 
     that credit card companies usually give you a more favourable exchange 
     rate. The other claim is that places that accept credit cards charge 
     higher prices in the first place (to offset the fee they pay to the credit 
     card companies) and this offsets the exchange gain.
     Any opinions ?

I think this depends on the country you are visiting.
For example, in Britain, although companies can charge more for credit
card purchases they don't because they know that no one will use them.
In some cases they impose a lower limit on the purchase.
So basically credit cards a a good idea here and I haven't had
problems in the rest of Europe.
I was surprised to find that the card companies give the best rate
available on the day of the purchase.
(Being a cynical type I'd have thought that they'd go for the worst
reasonable rate.)

The use of credits cards depends more on whether the country you're
going to uses them and whether you want to get money from ATMs.
For example, ATMs in France take VISA cards but I didn't find any
in Holland or Germany that did. You can find ATMs in Britain for
almost any of the major cards (VISA, Mastercard, Am Ex, ...).

   * Convert all coins into paper currency before leaving one country. 
   * Carrying currency in local currency (francs, marks etc) from the US 
     to lock in current exchange rates. Ofcourse with the rates being the 
     way they are, I'm not sure if this will help a whole lot unless ofcourse 
     the dollar continues to spiral downwards. 

These later solutions involve a lot of organisation and paying of
comission and probably minimum amounts of money to exchange.

The best way of carrying money I've found is:

  - rely as much as you can on your credit card making sure that
    you're not spending money at a faster rate simply because
    you're using your card and buying more expensive goods than
    usual;

  - take a reasonable amount of money in American Express
    travelers cheques and change them at domestic banks when you need to
    when credit cards are no good and there are no ATMs;

  - get a small amount of cash in the local currency when you arrive
    by the best means possible.

  - persuade the EEC to adopt the ECU :-)




   
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Rob Scott
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