I'm after a fair few little bits for my bus simulator, and i'm basing my sim on a german bus, so the parts i'm after are naturally located in germany,
Almost all the stuff is on ebay, but the germans don't do paypal, and to send a direct bank transfer costs about 15 quid last time i looked, which i find a bit much for items costing from 2 to 10 euro's each,
I have in the past send euro's in the post, one of the insurance options covered money, but that's still a bit risky,
Anyone know of another way to get small ammounts of money to people in germany for ebay purchases, as it seems the cash in an envelops is the best way, but some sellers dont want to do this.
Western Union? Moneygram? I suppose it depends on how much the parties trust each other but I've found WU a reasonably easy way of sending smallish amounts overseas to people that I know. I've also found their conversion rate of exchange to be more reasonable than some since they are making most of their money from the fee. When you do the sums to compare methods, it's worth looking at both RoE and fees.
Why do you think that the Germans don't do PayPal? I now use PayPal to pay my annual subscription to news.individual.net - and that's certainly German!
When I first signed up a few years ago, it wasn't an option. At that time I used ClickandBuy.
Travelex allow you to send money for 99p - 5 day service. I used it to buy something from a German web site. The problem I had was that there was no way to enter my own reference number so I had to email the web site to get them to tie up the payment with my order. It all worked in the end.
One thing a swede did buying from me was a one time limited credit card
- valid to 500 euros - and he just said 'key those numbers in and draw the cash - you cant rob me!'
You can send a cheque of course, written in Euros.
Or an international postal order, if such things exist, or as you say banknotes in letters BUT its the buyer that has to beware,. The money 'never turned up' etc.
Because a lot of them don't like it, don't trust it and have been using bank transfer for decades - it's ingrained. There are many German sellers who will take PP but plenty who won't.
Google checkout - getting pricey now since they want 3.5% on cc payments, but a seller can issue you an invoice by email, and you pay with cc. (whether that is any more acceptable than paypal is another matter!)
It constantly surprises me that you can't make a BACS transfer at no charge to any bank within the EU - after all this time. Yet another case of banks protecting their charges?
AIUI a big issue is currency exchange risk. Bearing in mind that BACS is not yet instantaneous within the UK I think it'd be rather tricky to come up with a system to cater for GBP-Euro (and GBP-HUF, GBP-DKK etc etc) in way in which both parties know just what they are sending/getting. And when people want it for free......
If you open a Euro account you may be able to get what you want as a result of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). But even then t/fs are not necessarily free. I used to have a Euro a/c where they were, then they cost £15, then they were free again. There's no guarantee: see eg
Thing is, Germany still seems to be a mostly cash country, shops take credit cards, but not all take debit cards, but it seems most people prefer to carry wodges of euro's with them to pay for stuff.
they do/did have the geld card thing, a sort of pre-pay cashless payment account on your main bank card, you transfer a few tens of euro's from the main account to the geldkarte part, and use it for small purchases.... newspapers/tram ticket/hand job off a prozzie etc, much cheaper for the shops to use it, uses a different pin number to the main account, and i believe the data is stored on the card, so no need to connect to a central server at the sale time, thus making it quicker to use... but that's for when you are there in person, last i heard it wasnt that popular, as they still prefered to have the real money in their hands for a few seconds before handing it over,
i personaly hate cash, pain in the arse, much easier to use a card,
Germans do not trust paypal as others have pointed out, i don't blame them really, the instiant bank transfer thing they are used to is free, fast and safe, paypal want complicated percentages of the money for doing the transaction, and like to screw the seller if the buyer moans it's got a tiny chip on the back thats never seen but wasnt mentioned in the description, then the buyer pretends they sent it back but it got lost in the post, and paypal just say 'tuff' to the seller.
Anyway, looks like i am sorted now thanks to grimly, i just need to find the items i'm after, lots of bits i wanted went before xmas, but not much has been put on after.
Well, banks seem to manage to transfer billions in currency trading every day. I don't expect it to be free. On the other hand, I don't see why moving a few hundred pounds in an English bank to deposit in an Italian bank in euros should cost £25 but drawing euros from a cash machine in Italy from the same UK bank account costs significantly less.
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