Wire Transfer Payments

[Jkarrows]

Can I say sorry if this issue has been flogged to death on here.

We have just closed on a 200 point SSR contract and now comes the paying part.

Now being from the UK we need to make an international payment, there are so many choices to choose from, we could use one of the Banks in the UK but only Natwest seem to offer a sensible fee and costs but you have to visit them and make an appointment for over 10K payments and if your from the UK your know that making appointments at banks is a right pain in the backside.

Many others have used other sources and one that seems to crop up a lot is XE.

Now being a old worry guts the thought of giving someone i do not know a large amount of money and hoping it gets to the other end worries me.

Yes i am one of life's worry people.

So can someone please assist and offer some advise good, bad or indifferent as to how i send the best part of 15K to the american bank to close my DVC contract.

Again sorry if this has been flogged to death on here.

 

[Jkarrows]

Anyone able to advise?

 

[Hex]

hi - we did this for the first time from the UK about three weeks ago and this bit made me (very) nervous too. We used TOR FX. I’m not sure they are the cheapest, but customer service was good. All went through fine.

 

[PsycProfPlum]

I can't contribute but wanted to point out you might have better luck on the UK DVC forum. Good luck!

 

[Greg36]

I can't really give you any advice either. We are from Canada and have gone both routes (i.e., wire transfer and courier of a bank draft) and I can tell you I found both approaches very stressful. If you mail it you need to let the courier company know the amount as it has to be declared (if it is over 10K, I believe) going over the border whereas apparently the banking institution will take care of those details on your behalf if you wire it. I found the wiring stressful as my bank here in Canada basically read me the riot act on how it was not an ideal way to send money and that any loss was on me. I think it might have just been an inexperienced teller but who knows. One thing I liked about the wiring was I got an e-mail from the closing agent within about an hour telling me the money was there whereas it was a long few days with the courier service. Good luck with whatever you decide. Just make sure you get the receiving institution's details exactly right....

 

[Jkarrows]

I can't contribute but wanted to point out you might have better luck on the UK DVC forum. Good luck!

I was hoping people from outside the US would comments good or bad regardless of location being the UK.

 

[ThinkBelieveDream&Dare]

We bank with Lloyds and wired ours through them. I didn't make an appointment, I went into the branch as soon as they opened and asked to speak to someone about it. I had to wait a few minutes. They gave me a bit of a drilling when I mentioned timeshare lol.... said they had a duty of care to make sure I wasn't being coerced by scammers lol.
The person dealing with me was helpful and extremely thorough, he gave me a printout of the transaction and said he might have to look into DVC for himself
Yes, it was a bit more expensive than using one of the currency transfer companies, but so worth it for the peace of mind knowing our hard earned money would be winging it's way immediately and we'd be owners within a few days.
Good luck with whatever you decide to do and..... wishing you many years of Magical vacations

 

[Jkarrows]

We bank with Lloyds and wired ours through them. I didn't make an appointment, I went into the branch as soon as they opened and asked to speak to someone about it. I had to wait a few minutes. They gave me a bit of a drilling when I mentioned timeshare lol.... said they had a duty of care to make sure I wasn't being coerced by scammers lol.
The person dealing with me was helpful and extremely thorough, he gave me a printout of the transaction and said he might have to look into DVC for himself
Yes, it was a bit more expensive than using one of the currency transfer companies, but so worth it for the peace of mind knowing our hard earned money would be winging it's way immediately and we'd be owners within a few days.
Good luck with whatever you decide to do and..... View attachment 409253wishing you many years of Magical vacations

Thank you, think i will have to see what it will cost to do it at Natwest, it states on line they charge 30 pounds to do the transaction but i can not find anywhere on there site where it shows Natwest current exchange rates.

 

[Madame]

Check with your title company that the receiving bank in the US doesn’t charge a fee. Our first resale with MTV they had us factor in the wire fee. The second was through FA and I tried to explain that the bank would take part of the deposit for a wire fee and was ignored. The deposit arrived short the fee & I had to pay the rest via CC. I’m in Canada though so YMMV.

 

[Jkarrows]

Check with your title company that the receiving bank in the US doesn’t charge a fee. Our first resale with MTV they had us factor in the wire fee. The second was through FA and I tried to explain that the bank would take part of the deposit for a wire fee and was ignored. The deposit arrived short the fee & I had to pay the rest via CC. I’m in Canada though so YMMV.

Thanks, yes we have been told we have to factor in an extra 45 dollars.

 

[ThinkBelieveDream&Dare]

Thank you, think i will have to see what it will cost to do it at Natwest, it states on line they charge 30 pounds to do the transaction but i can not find anywhere on there site where it shows Natwest current exchange rates.

I checked my bank statement for the transaction @Jkarrows - it shows as:

07 Mar 19 OUR CHARGE PAY 9.50
07 Mar 19 FORGN PYT XXXXXXXXX TFR 16,359.18
details of the transaction:
£16,359.18 was transferred out of your account.
Transaction type: Transfer (TFR) Rate: USD@1.2754

Also checked online and found the exchange rate on the day:
On March 07, 2019 the Official GBP to USD Exchange Rate:
Close: 1 GBP = 1.3091 USD
Best: 1 GBP = 1.3185 USD
Worst: 1 GBP = 1.3069 USD

So their actual fee was £9.50 and the rate they gave me was somewhere between 3 and 3.5 cents below the 'live' rate.

Hope this helps

 

[Jkarrows]

I checked my bank statement for the transaction - it shows as:

07 Mar 19 OUR CHARGE PAY 9.50
07 Mar 19 FORGN PYT XXXXXXXXX TFR 16,359.18
details of the transaction:
£16,359.18 was transferred out of your account.
Transaction type: Transfer (TFR) Rate: USD@1.2754

Also checked online and found the exchange rate on the day:
On March 07, 2019 the Official GBP to USD Exchange Rate:
Close: 1 GBP = 1.3091 USD
Best: 1 GBP = 1.3185 USD
Worst: 1 GBP = 1.3069 USD

So their actual fee was £9.50 and the rate they gave me was somewhere between 3 and 3.5 cents below the 'live' rate.

Hope this helps

Thanks, so using your figures.

with 16359.18 X 1.2754 = 20864.50 Dollars

Office Exchange Rates Worst 16359.18 X 1.3069 = 21379.81 Dollars
or
Best Rate 16359.18 x 1.3185 = 21569.58 Dollars

So between 515 to 705 dollars less with your bank on the exchange rate plus the 9.50 pounds fee

So using the bank exchange rate of 1.2754 against the less dollars it cost an extra,
515 dollars divided by 1.2754 = 403.79 pounds
705 dollars divided by 1.2754 = 552.77 pounds

It cost an extra 403 to 552 pounds more then the official exchange rates to do the exchange to pay the amount you needed in dollars with your bank.

If that makes sense on my working out.

Thanks.

 

[ThinkBelieveDream&Dare]

@Jkarrows I think you're about right, I know it was a considerable amount all in - but as I said in my initial reply, we felt it was worth the extra for the speed of the transaction, sense of security and peace of mind. I was terrified of making a mistake and messing up lol.
Sadly the exchange rate atm is even worse than the rate we got - and it was not great even then

 

[Jkarrows]

@Jkarrows I think you're about right, I know it was a considerable amount all in - but as I said in my initial reply, we felt it was worth the extra for the speed of the transaction, sense of security and peace of mind. I was terrified of making a mistake and messing up lol.
Sadly the exchange rate atm is even worse than the rate we got - and it was not great even then

Very true, the exchange rate is awful, when we first went to America many many years ago we almost got 2 dollars to the pound.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

Frankly it's freaky to transfer that much money even if you live in the US. Good luck in finding the best way to accomplish this internationally!

 

[Jkarrows]

Frankly it's freaky to transfer that much money even if you live in the US. Good luck in finding the best way to accomplish this internationally!

Yes agree it's such a worry.

 

[Jason@dvcstore]

Frankly it's freaky to transfer that much money even if you live in the US. Good luck in finding the best way to accomplish this internationally!

True. When working with Mason Title they seem to make it "less freaky."

 

[Anthony1971]

A lot is dependent on the bank... We make W/T to the UK form the USA and many other countries for that fact.
Between UK and USA is in general easier and fast.
As others have said watch the rates HOWEVER the rates may not be the end all be all as for the transfer itself to work there may be multiple banks involved in other words bank A may not have a relationship with bank B so bank A needs to transfer the money to Bank C in order for it to reach bank B in which case your fees and possible even your exchange rate will be higher. I would look for a larger bank that has a relationship with the bank you are transferring to if this is the case mostly fees are 45.00 but understand this is on both ends incoming and outgoing -- so if you pay all fees you may pay 90.00 also if you use a direct relationship the receiver will be able to verify the same day depending on time otherwise it might be the next day. I am not sure is this bank is popular in the UK but Barclays has a USA business and this should take a lot of the worry out of a transfer to the USA not sure how many relationships the have with US banks but internally it should become a transfer within the USA so a lot faster and maybe less costly? I ma certain there are Banks in the USA and UK that have branches in both being the number of people form the UK who work here and vice versa..... those are the banks I would use....

 

[Jkarrows]

True. When working with Mason Title they seem to make it "less freaky."

Can I ask how the title company make it less freaky as they do not do the payment transfer?

 

[ThinkBelieveDream&Dare]

Can I ask how the title company make it less freaky as they do not do the payment transfer?

We were lucky to have both The Timeshare Store and Mason Title for our purchase and both companies were really efficient and speedy, keeping us informed every step of the way, thus easing what niggling fears we had. Mason Title contacted us immediately they got notified that the money had arrived safely then again as soon as we'd closed I'd heard and read that quite a few buyers had to keep phoning, emailing and pushing to be kept in the loop @Jkarrows

Have you wired your funds yet, hope so and that all went well for you