Originally Posted by
tmiw
Used my Schwab debit card at a Scotiabank ATM in the Puerto Vallarta airport today to pull out $1600 pesos. The ATM charged me an additional $44.30 pesos on top of the amount I withdrew ($4.80 IVA/government tax + $30 ATM commission + $9.50 for some sort of theft protection thing according to Google Translate? I probably should have read the ATM prompts more closely.)
Anyway, xe.com rate looks to have been around $14.92 pesos per dollar at the time of the withdrawal meaning that it should have costed me approximately $110.21 USD; Schwab online banking shows a debit for $110.61 USD, or a 0.3% difference. Not bad, though I'm betting I'll probably need to call Schwab to manually reimburse the $30 pesos.
Let us know what Schwab does with the other crap fees besides the ATM operator fee.
IVA tax, theft protection, ... when will the crap fees end? I've never had any of these while traveling in Europe, Australia, China, or Thailand.
How the heck is getting you own money from an ATM in any way related to a "value added" tax? Back to avoiding ATMs and carrying cash I guess.
Very bad situation if governments around the world spot this windfall opportunity - worse than the darn tourist tax in most cities in Italy - what a rip off - tourists bring in tons of money to local economies and get thanked by the local city council by taxing them for being there!