Ebay's Currency Conversion Charges Warning!
Money Saving
I haven't seen it mentioned for a while so thought it would be worth repeating. If you are buying something on ebay in a foreign currency then be careful if you allow ebay to do the conversion for you to pounds. Case in point I recently bought something for about £875 in euros (1014). Ebay gave me the option to pay in pounds using their conversion or warned me about credit card charges but I could pay in euros on my credit card. Using ebay would have been just over £900 to do the purchase but using my own credit card for euros was £876 so about a £25 difference. A significant amount of money.
Lots of credit cards don't charge for currency conversion in fact both of mine don't. It looks like ebay charge about 2.5-3% so if your card charges less than that it is still worth using your credit card for conversion.
I have noticed that before with eBay, their exchange rate is way off to what it should be, if your buying from the US and the exchange rate $1.26 eBay's is $1.14
martinlufc5637 In which case it sounds like ebay are just copying paypal as they used to do something like that. Maybe charge 1-2% on top plus use a unfavourable exchange rate. In my case if I'd clicked the wrong option it would have cost me over £25.
Oh yeah, you gotta be careful or they'll charge you.
At ATMs they ask if you want to be charged in foreign currency or conversion, and some may accidentally choose the conversion which costs more.
PhilipMarc That sounds like good info too. I wonder what the ATM rate is compared to a credit card without a currency conversion fee.
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