EU-Regulation
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Hi! There's an EU bill that has been passed two or three years ago and requires all banks to charge their customers for wire-transfers within the EU with exactly what they'd charge you for a national transfer. Unfortunately there's little you can do if all your banks don't follow the regulation.
In my case it really was way cheaper to withdraw money at the ATM (my US-bank has a partner bank in Germany) than to make transfers.
Another helpful instrument is Paypal. You'd also get charged for making transfers with Paypal (i.e. you get a worse exchange rate) but I guess it's still gonna be a whole lot cheaper than what Abbey wants to charge you with.
Oh, and maybe you should ask RBS if available for you. They offer checking accounts in Germany and Britain so maybe there's a way to reduce cost for transfers within their very own network.Anonymous 16 mei 2006, 11:50 - Rapporteer misbruik