I have to send it all at the same time and I can't use Bluebird etc. The money has to reach one my relatives for her tution at her university in Italy. I was mainly interested in xoom.com kind of service where I can pay with my credit card but not incur a cash advance fee.

I could do paypal as one of the posters suggested but I am not sure at this point if the person I need to send the money to has or can open a paypal account.

Thanks all for chiming in. If Xoom kind of service does not work with credit card, I may just have to wire the money from my checking account.

Just checked out xoom.com. Wow they give a bad exchange rate. On $2999 which is the maximal $4.95 fee only on xoom.com you would end up with 2183.95 EUR. On xe.com you would end up with 2257 EUR. That is a lot of money for virtually nothing.

Paypal will lock your account for 6 months saying that they are "investigating". Don't trust them.

Can you pay the university directly, or on line, with your credit card?

Not if you're trying to send/transfer money to another user.
This is from Amazon's site:
"Amazon Payments allows U.S. as well as international customers to use major credit cards to make payments on Amazon Payments-powered websites. However, bank account and Amazon Payments account balance transfers are enabled only for US based customers. All transactions are in U.S. dollars."

If her university accepts credit cards, you can just pay her tuition with your card.
Another option is to give your relative a rewards debit card as an authorized user and you can get points/miles when she uses it. It would be better if the bank charges no forex fees.

services like xe.com or oanda.com are the way to go for this. Excellent exchange rates but no miles.

That's an excellent idea, I never thought of that. Let me see if that can work.

For most Europeans, and alien European residents with an awareness of their surroundings and not their alien-status, the notion of pre-paid cards is not known. In many highly civilised parts of Europe, the use of a credit card is only in high-end establishments where foreign tourists are found. The idea of someone in Italy being able to offload 3000 dollars on pre-paid cards is worth a documentary film, or a comedy. It could also alert counter-terrorism watchers, since such bizarre behaviour was sometimes used by the sillier of our lunatic brothers and sisters to launder funds.

Western Union and suchlike take massive slices of commission.

I would advise you to shed your expensive mileage fetish, and use a simple, straightforward bank transfer. Most normal participants in European life have a bank account and with SEPA/IBAN account numbers, a transfer is done usually within hours, once it has exited the often lethargic US banking system.

There is another, athough not cheap, option. Fly to Italy and give it personally.

Whatever you do, please DON'T send any card or anything valuable by post. It would never reach the intended recipient. You'll never hear an Italian expression equivalent to "The check is in the mail" because people just don't mail such things (the post office can be used to transfer money cheaply, kind of like a postal wire transfer, but this method doesn't require an envelope).

Expensive Mileage Fetish - lol - nice expression. But I got your point as well all others. I decided to just do a simple wire transfer. Costs about $45 and the exchange rates are decent.

Thank you all - you guys and gals are what makes this forum great. :-::-::-::-::-: