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Where/how to get dolar blue exchange rate?

Where/how to get dolar blue exchange rate?

Old Nov 27, 2014, 5:33 pm
  #166  
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Originally Posted by NickB
How easily/well do Euros (rather than USD) trade in the cuevas? Will I take a significant hit in exchange rate terms in selling euros rather than US dollars and would I be better off changing my euros to US dollars and take these to Argentina instead?

My exchanging euros to dollars first here will typically entail an additional 2.5-3% hit in terms of exchange rate loss so if the "premium" to be paid in spreads for EUR/ARS rather than USD/ARS is not more than 1 or 2%, I would probably be better off taking euros. If the premium to be paid is more (or if it is significantly more hassle to find a cueva accepting euros), then the double conversion EUR>USD>ARS would still be worth it.
If you are taking a 3% hit for trading Euros to Dollars in Euroland then you should perhaps be looking at who you are banking with. Retail exchange rates are one thing, but that kind of spread seems excessive... its like you are almost getting raped. Who do you bank with...? Have you compared this with a local money changer...? Do you have a brokerage or securities account...? Many times ForEx spreads are smaller if you trade from a Investment account rather than from regular commercial banking accounts. I suggest you check with your account manager at your FI and see what options you have.

In Buenos Aires, the Euro to Peso is traded through the US Dollar, you get a double hit on the bid/ask spread. Also, since the Euro to US ForEx market in EZE is very small, the spreads are abnormally high. Its hard to calculate with a proper degree of certainty what spreads you will face since this will depend on where you trade (here in EZE).... its not the same if you transact at a market-maker in La City or if you are dealing with a sub dealer, etc.

Hope the above helps.... and hope you have a great trip!! ^
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Old Nov 28, 2014, 5:40 am
  #167  
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Originally Posted by Gaucho100K
If you are taking a 3% hit for trading Euros to Dollars in Euroland then you should perhaps be looking at who you are banking with. Retail exchange rates are one thing, but that kind of spread seems excessive... its like you are almost getting raped. Who do you bank with...? Have you compared this with a local money changer...? Do you have a brokerage or securities account...? Many times ForEx spreads are smaller if you trade from a Investment account rather than from regular commercial banking accounts. I suggest you check with your account manager at your FI and see what options you have.
I can certainly do much better if we are talking electronic transfers or other dematerialised operations but I would struggle doing massively less for purchasing physical banknotes. My (French) bank is Socit Gnrale and they are, as far as I can see, pretty much in line with others. French Online moneychangers are slightly better at about 2.5% but that would not be practical for me for various reasons. There may be alternatives that I am unaware of but my general experience with retail financial services in France is that opportunities to significantly do better (at retail level) than what the banks do on forex are limited.

Spreads here in London tend to be tighter. On GBP/USD or GBP/EUR, I could get banknotes with a 1.5% spread from median inter-bank rates but since I would have to change twice (EUR>GBP>USD), that would defeat the purpose.

Happy to hear any practical suggestion for obtaining physical USD banknotes starting from Euros held in a French account at a rate significantly lower than 3% (bearing in mind that I live most of the time in London and do not plan to spend any time in the US other than changing planes before my next trip to Argentina).
In Buenos Aires, the Euro to Peso is traded through the US Dollar, you get a double hit on the bid/ask spread. Also, since the Euro to US ForEx market in EZE is very small, the spreads are abnormally high. Its hard to calculate with a proper degree of certainty what spreads you will face since this will depend on where you trade (here in EZE).... its not the same if you transact at a market-maker in La City or if you are dealing with a sub dealer, etc.

Hope the above helps.... and hope you have a great trip!! ^
OK, so from what you and britenbsas say, it would in all likelihood be better to convert to USD in advance.
Thanks to both of you. This is very helpful indeed. And even if I end up paying 1 or 2% too much, it should still end up pretty good value.
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Old Nov 28, 2014, 8:28 am
  #168  
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Originally Posted by NickB
I can certainly do much better if we are talking electronic transfers or other dematerialised operations but I would struggle doing massively less for purchasing physical banknotes.
Exactly... hence my suggestion to go through a Securities Account - in the US these are usually called Brokerage Accounts. Many times these accounts can have multi-currency accounts so you first do the trade in the "electronic realm" and once you have a balance in the currency, you draw the cash at the teller.

Don't know if your bank will allow this, but some banks do allow you to have accounts in various currencies as part of your retail banking accounts, HSBC through their Premier banking is one famous example, Citibank with their CitiGold service is another. Perhaps its best for you to first have your French bank open a US savings account, then do the ForEx trade electronically and final step draw the cash. Depending on what amount you need, it may even make sense to open the account just for this, and you can close the USD account after you draw the cash, this is especially smart if the bank will start to levy fees on that account should it remain open.... all this varies from bank to bank and from account to account. As you know, Banks say all their clients are equal but we know that some are more equal than others....
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Old Nov 28, 2014, 6:31 pm
  #169  
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Originally Posted by Gaucho100K
Don't know if your bank will allow this, but some banks do allow you to have accounts in various currencies as part of your retail banking accounts, HSBC through their Premier banking is one famous example, Citibank with their CitiGold service is another. Perhaps its best for you to first have your French bank open a US savings account, then do the ForEx trade electronically and final step draw the cash. Depending on what amount you need, it may even make sense to open the account just for this, and you can close the USD account after you draw the cash, this is especially smart if the bank will start to levy fees on that account should it remain open.... all this varies from bank to bank and from account to account. As you know, Banks say all their clients are equal but we know that some are more equal than others....
Thanks for the suggestion but I do not think that it would be very practical in my situation. You can open an account in foreign currency in France but, afaik,* you would not be able to directly withdraw cash in the currency of the account. You could send and receive electronic payments for it, possibly pay or receive cheques in the currency of the account (although there are complications with that) but you would not be able to withdraw cash directly. If you wanted to withdraw cash within France, it would have to transit via a Euro-denominated account (and therefore converted to euros with forex fees to be paid) and withdrawn in euros and then converted back to the currency concerned at retail rates for banknotes, which would completely defeat the purpose of the exercise and cost more than if you had just bought banknotes in the first place. At any rate, this was the way things were last I looked at it, which I must admit was quite a few years back, but I would be surprised if it had fundamentally changed.

Moreover, even if it were possible, it would be a way over-engineered solution to my needs. I have relatively few EUR-USD transactions and it would not really make sense for me to open a new bank account with another bank (in fact two accounts) for a facility that I will rarely use (or should I say once in a (dolar-)blue moon ), and that is before we even take into account the bureaucratic faff of dealing with financial service providers in France.

So while I can see how this might make sense for others in some countries, it is not really practical for my circumstances.

*: at any rate as far as personal banking is concerned.
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Old Dec 1, 2014, 7:17 pm
  #170  
 
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Has anybody had first hand experience with azimo.com and local pick-up? Looks a good rate (even after 5% fee), regulated etc. - but always good to get some more colour if possible!

Thanks
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Old Dec 12, 2014, 8:36 am
  #171  
 
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Will be in BA in 2 weeks

Hello all,
I'll be in BA in 2 weeks and was wondering if anyone could point me to a cambio they have used recently. Most of the specific places mentioned were nearly a year ago and may not be in operation. If no one has been recently, then I guess i'll just wander down Calle Florida. Thanks!
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Old Dec 12, 2014, 6:11 pm
  #172  
 
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The blue dollar in Ushuaia and El Calafate

We will be traveling to El Calafate and Ushuaia in late December. Can anyone tell me if it is as easy to change US dollars at the blue rate in those cities as it is in Buenos Aires and Mendoza? Thanks in advance.
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Old Dec 13, 2014, 2:15 pm
  #173  
 
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Originally Posted by Siempre Viajando
We will be traveling to El Calafate and Ushuaia in late December. Can anyone tell me if it is as easy to change US dollars at the blue rate in those cities as it is in Buenos Aires and Mendoza? Thanks in advance.

This is from an article on the subject:

On a recent afternoon on Lavalle street, while DolarBlue.Net listed the buy rate at $13.5, arbolitos were offering anything from $13 for US$100, which rose to $13.2 if you were willing to sell US$1,000 in a single trade.
Likewise, tourists short on pesos in Patagonia, or the far north, will receive an unpleasant shock if they are used to rates in Buenos Aires. One money changer I visited in a small southern town looked up the official rate, then the blue rate, then split the difference. I refused. He just shrugged. When you are the only game in town, you can set your own terms.

or the complete story see:

http://www.argentinaindependent.com/...dollar-market/
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Old Dec 14, 2014, 6:57 am
  #174  
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Indeed... thanks for posting this. ^

I get emails and private messages all the time about the entire $$$ exchange situation so I always welcome when others also chime in with relevant facts & information.

Originally Posted by Panam Clipper
Likewise, tourists short on pesos in Patagonia, or the far north, will receive an unpleasant shock if they are used to rates in Buenos Aires. One money changer I visited in a small southern town looked up the official rate, then the blue rate, then split the difference. I refused. He just shrugged. When you are the only game in town, you can set your own terms.
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Old Dec 16, 2014, 11:09 am
  #175  
 
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We just returned from BsAs (Dec. 1-9), and it was simplest to just walk down Florida Ave. to get pesos at very close to the blue rate, which was ~12.5-13 while we were there. There seemed to be a person every 10 feet or so saying "cambio cambio", and we just asked what their rate would be for the amount of money we wanted to change, they told us (or showed it on a calculator), then we kept walking if we thought we could do better. It seemed the rate increased ever so slightly the further down the street we got, from 12.6 to 12.8 the few times we went. Once we agreed on a rate, we followed the cambio guy into an "office" off of the street, gave them our $100 USD bills, they gave us the agreed-upon number of pesos and we left. Easy as pie.

Even easier, we found out, was that most shops and every restaurant where we ate readily accepted USD, and during our trip, they mostly offered a 12 exchange rate, a few offered 13 exchange rate. So we'd go to dinner, pay with a $100 bill, and get change in pesos to use the next day, and repeated. One shop would only offer 11, so we used pesos there.

If we ever go back, I'd head to Florida Ave, exchange $500 USD, then just spend USD at restaurants and shops and get pesos as change to spend (taxis, etc.)

The main point being is that you'll always do MUCH better than the official exchange rate with USD cash, it's accepted almost as widely as pesos, and you'll sometimes get a better rate in a shop or restaurant than you can do on Florida Ave.

Also, fyi, no one seemed overly concerned about the condition of the $100 bills we brought. They can be sticklers in Burma and sometimes in Thailand, so I brought new, sequentially numbered $100s, and the cambios were completely non-plussed!
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Old Dec 26, 2014, 4:51 pm
  #176  
 
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This thread and other similar ones on this board were very helpful in planning my trip, so I wanted to add a data point to help others. I arrived in BA this morning with US$1000 for a four day trip with the plan being to exchange US$500 and then paying for what I can in US Dollars with the remaining US$500.

I'm staying at the Park Hyatt and prior to setting out this afternoon, I stopped by the concierge to ask if they could recommend a cambio. They stated that they could only recommend bank branches as that is the only legal exchange, so I thanked them and headed down to Calle Florida. I wandered around for awhile and eventually felt comfortable enough to talk to a gentleman posted up by the Ateneo just south of Viamonte. We agreed on a price of 13,00 (today's rate is 13,38) and then I was lead into a building (with a security guard inside) and into a travel agent's. The process was quick and seemed more legit than some of the horror stories on TripAdvisor. They were also doing some booming business and it looked like a couple of the guys all brought clients back to this place.

Anyway, I never felt uncomfortable for a single moment and I'm glad I chose this method instead of Xoom.
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Old Dec 26, 2014, 8:16 pm
  #177  
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Do they have anything like this in Puerto Iguazu?
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Old Dec 27, 2014, 3:08 pm
  #178  
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Originally Posted by wco81
Do they have anything like this in Puerto Iguazu?
Would like to know this as well.
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Old Dec 30, 2014, 2:00 pm
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Where/how to get dolar blue exchange rate?

Only got 12.95 in Calle Florida yesterday - but I was only changing $200 so wasn't going to waste a lot of time chasing the best rate (was working off 13,15 rate from the Dolarblue twitter account that hadn't been updated for a few weeks - updated to 13.65 afterwards...)

£7 'cost' vs rate posted not a lot. Brought about 50m up the road and into a ground floor retail unit in a shopping centre so didn't feel concerned about process. After scoping out the street approaches one guy who quoted '20.7' - think it was his English but asked him to confirm and passed (not a great rate if he meant 12.7, and language issues something I wanted to avoid)

Made the 11.8 at my hotel seem not too bad - big convenience factor for first day changing $100 that way, rather than needing to rush off to Calle Florida first thing. Plus I view it as a quasi tip for the reception guys

Think I'll hang onto any change I have as quite enjoying BA and plan to come back
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Old Dec 30, 2014, 2:37 pm
  #180  
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Staying in Palermo Soho where the rates seem about 5% lower currently.
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