Quote from: studley67 on June 01, 2014, 10:01:09 PM

mildflame received a cheque from his auntie in the uk.20 pound sterling.for his 17 th birthday.
he was excited after doing the exchange rate and realizing he had nearly $40 aus gift.
WELL,i took him to the banksa friday to deposit said cheque.he was in there a long time so i went in and found him having to sign a proceedure document to process the cheque.I was a bit concerened and asked what was going on.
was told the said cheque had to be passed back to the uk.and go through many hands before it could be credited to his account,at a cost of $10.50 aud plus they gave us a total crap exchange rate.\

he will end up with about $ 19 aud in 4-5 weeks.banks suck big time.ps if said auntie had sent a 20 pound note,it would stiil have attracted a fee of $10.50 plus the same crap exchange rate.

WTF is this world banking system doing????

We are going a bit off topic.. but... my folks often transfer funds from the UK direct to my bank account here in Aus and it costs nothing for them to do so and cost me nothing at this end. It has to be a direct deposit from UK though.. doesn't work the other way. I once had $14000 transferred with no fees attached. Then again, they don't have bank fees in UK.. you bank for free unless you go into the red. When I first arrived here 20 years ago, I went to every bank to open up an account to find one that didn't charge a fee just to have an account.. couldn't believe you had to pay just to have your money there!