Accessing currency overseas

In the letter “Instead of Heathrow” (Sept. ’14, pg. 14), a subscriber wrote, regarding flying into northwestern England, “And if you choose to get local currency at the airport upon your arrival, be aware that Travelex, the currency-exchange bank, has a monopoly on cash machines in Manchester Airport and offers an outrageous exchange rate.”

Two things to note —

1) Travelex (www.travelex.com) is not a bank. It’s a currency-exchange company.

2) Regular cash machines, not operated by Travelex, are found in all three terminals, on both sides of the security-control points, as per “Manchester Airport Information” (http://airportinformationmanchester.co.uk/cashmachines.html).

Once again, it’s worth pointing out that when you’re traveling outside of the US and you want some cash in the local currency, using a debit card to withdraw money from a checking account back home via an ATM  (aka “Cashpoint” in the UK and, among other names, “Bancomat” on the Continent) is, by far, the best solution.

The banks that own the ATMs overseas usually don’t charge a fee, while most US financial institutions do. (The fee could be a foreign-transaction fee charged by the US bank from which you withdraw money via the overseas ATM [very common, except for Schwab and a few others] or the usual “other bank” fee [that most banks also impose here in the US when you use an ATM other than theirs] or it could be a fee that the owner of an overseas ATM imposes locally [a “usage” or “transaction” fee, although this is rather rare] or it could be a combination of two or three of these fees.)

Some US financial institutions (such as, again, Schwab) either don’t charge a fee or will actually refund a fee that may have been charged by a middleman (bank).

But even if the ATM transaction costs $3 or so (always a fixed, per-withdrawal fee, NOT a percentage of the amount withdrawn), that doesn’t amount to much as long as enough cash is withdrawn to last a few days. The exchange rate on such transactions (the bank-to-bank rate) is the best available anywhere, and non-bank currency-exchange services like Travelex can easily be avoided.

Before your trip, let the bank that issued your debit card know about your trip plans (the trip dates and countries to be visited) so that your transactions from abroad will not be blocked for being “suspicious.” Do the same with the issuers of every credit card you intend to use while out of the US.

One more thing — the same letter recommends a rather expensive way to spend a few hours during a layover at Manchester Airport: taking a private tour at $85 per hour for up to six people! For travelers on lower budgets, I would suggest Manchester’s free Metroshuttle buses (www.tfgm.com/buses/Pages/metroshuttle.aspx). 

These buses offer three city loops that, when combined with some walking, cover enough ground for an interesting half-day tour. 

If luggage is a problem for such a layover outing, the airport has luggage storage. Visit http://airportinformationmanchester.co.uk/luggagestorage.html.

LORENZ RYCHNER

Denver, CO

* Amanda Landers, Director of Media Relations at Capital One, explained to ITN that purchases made with Capital One debit or credit cards outside the US do not incur foreign transaction fees (FTFs). However, except for Capital One’s high-yield checking accounts and Capital One 360 online checking accounts, which waive the 3% fee, making a cash withdrawal with a Capital One debit card at an ATM outside of the US does incur a 3% fee along with any charges made by the third party (bank) that owns the ATM.

A list of credit cards that do not charge FTFs is maintained by CardHub.com and can be found at www.cardhub.com/credit-cards/foreign-transaction-fee.