Payments for ECM2018

Hi Dick,

Thomas and I spent a long time looking into this several weeks ago. In my case the payment was 12 CHF short. Thomas' bank at first told him that my bank had deducted this amount. My bank had charged me 4 GBP (a charge I accepted), and insisted that they had transferred the payment amount in full. They said that is a SEPA transfer, and as Switzerland is included in the EFTA, such transfers should be free of charge despite it being CHF rather than Euros.

When Thomas raised it again with his bank, they then said that the sterling payments were going through an intermediate bank rather than directly, and it was this unnamed intermediate bank that was deducting the 12 CHF. But from what you've said, the same appears to be true for Euro to CHF payments too ......

As I said to Thomas, this is like the old "change a light bulb" joke - how many bankers does it take to take cash out of one wallet and put it into another? The answer is three:
 - one who takes the money out of his wallet
 - another who puts the money into his wallet
 - and obviously one in the middle who quite reasonably makes a large charge for the huge effort involved in passing the money from the first banker to the third!

It's unbelievable, isn't it? Robbing b%$*?%&ds!!!!!!

It's not Thomas' fault though - from my own personal experience he's done all that he could have in terms of raising this with his bank, and we obviously wouldn't expect Thomas to personally make up the shortfall, which could easily run to over 1200 CHF by the sound of it.

As this appears to be a universal problem rather than a sterling-related issue, I'm wondering whether using PayPal might be a cheaper approach?

Alan

Ola Dick y Marion!

my experience is that, because I accepted ALL the bankcharges the ING would think to be neccessary, they 'robbed' me too: € 6,00 transfer and € 23,00 !!! in 'bankcost (bankkosten)
So if somebody is stealing the money, it's NOT Thomas' bank in CH.
Because he got the exact amount in CHF that i transferred to him. So it CAN be done correctly.

Now, because i know you're a good and decent person, take a glass of Rioja, sit down with your laptop, and write to him that YOU will deal with this.
And while you're at it, apologize for the harsh tone of your email, it's not fair to him.
Thomas does NOT deserve this, he and Nadja are doing a great job that is highly appreciated by everyone.

Cheers from cold Holland!

RandY

I suppose i had a similar issue with my payment. Thomas and me agreed that we will pay the difference at the check in. All is good and no problem .

🙁🤔

That's excellent news - Prost/Proost!

Happy ending! 

I thought £4 wasn't bad, but Rob's bank made no charge for his payment! My bank is HSBC, and his bank is First Direct, which is part of HSBC and uses exactly the same systems and IT infrastructure - go figure!

He did get the same rubbish GBP/CHF exchange rate as I did though!