At 10:37 PM 9/3/2002 +1200, Brian Swale wrote:
>Hi folks
>
>I've entered uncharted territory (for me) this week. Selling things and being
>paid via PayPal. Quite a learning curve. ( I mentioned once or twice before
>that I am also a fern nut, and in my spare time (with a friend) I have
>produced
>a complete list of all the ferns of the world, about 12,800 of them, along
>with
>their synonyms (alternative scientific names), geographic distribution,
>references and so forth. I sell this on CDROM now.).
>
>I think for USA citizens it is a lot more straight forward, but for me living
>outside the USA there are a few hurdles to jump. For a start, all currencies
>get converted to USA dollars. I wanted to be paid in New Zealand dollars. No
>go. This means I have to pay the cost of currency conversion (in addition to a
>fee for this which amounts to about 50n 60 - 70 dollars NZ.). That seems
>straight forward enough? They say they use the up-to-date exchange rates.
>
>I'd like to know WHOSE up-to-date exchange rates. Not those of ebay. Not
>those of the online currency converter I use <http://www.xe.com/ucc/>. Not
>those in my daily newspaper. They pitch the rate about 5% to my
>disadvantage; for example if the average rate is about 1:2.13588, they used
>1:2.0249.
When dealing with any financial institution (which, let's face it, Paypal's
becoming), there's one cardinal rule: if they're doing something that looks
like it's to their advantage (or your disadvantage), you're correct.
It *is* to their advantage/your disadvantage.
My local bank does the same thing when I take American money to be exchanged
for Canadian -- they impose a rate spread significantly larger than the spot
rate *and* a service charge on top of the spread. I no longer bother
exchanging U.S. money -- I just keep it around for the next time I'm going to
the States.
Garth
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