Originally Posted by
mad_rich
It rejected quite a lot of coins, so I had to feed the rejects back through several times and still it inexplicably refused to take a handful of EUR coppers and CHF 2 pieces, but all in all pretty painless.
The rate is obviously not outstanding, but I think it's actually very fair for handling all that obscure, low denomination change.
EUR 0.58 for CHF coins (vs 0.86 mid-market rate yesterday)
EUR 0.76 for CHF notes (vs 0.86 mid-market rate yesterday)
The Swiss 2 francs is hardly low denomination!
They have always paid a poor rate for Swiss francs especially considering that CHF is probably the easiest currency in the world for exchanging coins to notes. Unlimited amounts of coins are readily exchangeable at any Swiss post office for no commission or fees, and Switzerland is not very far from the UK.
They charged you the same percentage commission for that huge Australian 50c which needs to go halfway round the world.... and apparently you had an Australian 2 cents, which even Australian commercial banks just chuck into the bin rather than returning to the Reserve Bank (if you only have one coin, they will just give you the 2 cents into your account though
)
EUR 0.85 for EUR coins (so a 15% commission, probably twice what you'd pay at a Coinstar type machine, if you could find a EUR one on holiday somewhere)
The Belgian, German, Lithuanian and Portguese central banks will exchange reasonable amounts of euro coins commission-free. Cafes in Spain will happily take them off you too...
The reason the rates are not that great now, is because from September to October 2017, somebody screwed up with the programming and they were taken for a ride by multiple coin dealers from all over the UK. They were paying €0.97 for €1 of 1c coins, and $0.83 for $1 of American pennies, certainly not enough to even break even after repatriating them. They were also paying out for worthless Belgian / French franc coins, Cypriot pound coins and Dutch guilder coins, which ceased to be exchangeable years ago.