Bernie - I hear you. I had a guy send me $US450 by Western Union from St. Petersburg this week. It cost him a $US48 "fee" for doing it or 11%! AND I then needed to drive, with ID, 5 miles to their nearest office to collect the $A cash (at a rip-off conversion rate) as they can't credit my bank account or send me a $A check.

Kempis .. OK, I'll fix Catman for THREE dinners by 26th.

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~ Glen ~

I'll be happy to help out any non-US flyertalker.

I don't charge any fees but would sure love a United upgrade cert for the favor. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

Happy to do it. A thank you is all I ask.

Dan in NY

Money? Is that like artificial credit cards?

I'm not sure I understand exactly where the U.S. banking system is different/inefficient?

If someone needed, by way of a totally random example http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif, to pay someone in Australia A$200 from Germany, how would this be done without paper money orders, etc.?

Well, the banks can use SWIFT which is a system for Interbank Fast Transfers. But the customer has to pay for that service and that's the problem. For relatively small amounts of money the fee, in percentage terms, is very high.

Exactly Austman. My bankers here now want a FLAT $30 fee for a "SWIFT" foreign currency transfer or T/T whether $100 or $100,000 AND they screw you badly on then "real" exchange rate too. So on $200 example above, there is 15% loss PLUS the rate screw. If I bank a personal check of $US30 from a US resident it takes THREE MONTHS to actually clear and the associated fees literally leave me out of pocket - I was LOSING money on the deal, so now charge all that back to client.

So I need to spell this out in detail for foreign buyers for my business and point out their orders will not be dispatched for several months. Americans in particular I have found do not understand this problem. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

www.GlenStephens.com/payment.html

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~ Glen ~