From: "Shane Cook" 
Newsgroups: alt.consumers.uk-discounts.and.bargains uk.finance
Subject: Re: Cheap Dollars
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:46:58 +0000 (UTC)

> Best to use the ATM machines whilst there. I did that when in NYC in June
> and found it cheaper to do that (and less hastle ) than exchanging
> travellers cheques etc.
>
> Norman

Be careful of this. We went to Malta and I got some money out of of a HSBC 
cash machine with my HSBC card. My wife bought some jewlery on her Barclays 
connect card. I happened to note the exchange rate at the local currency 
exchange place the day we went shopping. It turned out HSBC gave me a worse 
rate than I could have got from the currency shop, and my wife got a better 
rate than the currency shop. Go figure.

I've also had some bad experiences with Egypt, with two identical 
transactions, made on the same day, with two credit cards, being some £50 or 
so difference when it came to getting the credit card bill on two amounts of 
around £600 each. I noticed my Tesco's card has a hidden 2.5% commission 
charge, which never gets shown as a seperate charge.

Does any card not charge a foreign currency commission rate and provide a 
good exchange rate? I'm off to Europe for the next few months, so I'm 
interested in finding a good card to use.

Kind Regards,
Shane Cook.