Those banking at CA BRITLINE should have received the new price list in English (37 pages!) today. They say the changes take effect from 1 April but helpfully don’t make it clear what has been changed (ie increased). If anyone spots a change that is of interest to others it would no doubt be appreciated.
It looks as if the charge for a transfer from the UK to France may cost 22,45€, even in € (I may be misreading the entry on p14), and even as the UK is in SEPA (that’s confusingly what my account manager says).
I got this a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t read it that way but could be wrong🙄. I would imagine Britline would lose an awful lot of customers if they started charging for euro pension money from the UK.
The UK remains in Sepa but because it’s no longer in the EU they don’t have to honour the EU rules on fees (or lack of). CA have been charging for ages - but equally CA branches make stuff up as they go.
Wise/Revolut have changed the game - banks have lost a lot of “fees” as people move to using online banks to convert/send - so they create new fees to fill the gap.
Unfortunately that’s exactly what my account manager has said is the Britline policy (and as @chrisell says) they and other versions of CA have been (albeit somewhat inconsistently) charging in those circumstances. The manager said that of course if you use an FX intermediary (eg Xe/ BIPS etc, and no doubt Wise/Revolut et al) to convert £ and make the payment in € from within the eurozone then there shouldn’t be any CA charge. He said that some people batch up monthly pension payments into more sizeable sums, then do the conversion and transfer as above.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere… in the early days of our life in France… I noticed our branch of CA were charging to receive money from UK…
but when I queried this and showed them that the payments were from our Pension Providers… they said the charges would be waived in future… and they were…
If they start charging… I’ll have their guts for garters and find another Bank… and make a lot of noise about it…
An excellent German retailer refunded an item and asked me for my IBAN so I gave them my CA one. Never thought to query why they weren’t just crediting back my card. In the UK refunds by same means as payment, is enforced, but I’ve noticed not in France so I thought maybe this is not a rule in .de either.
The refund of the entire price paid for the returned item was about 100 euros incoming in Euros - it had been a usual Euro spend . CA grabbed something like 48 euros of it in charges.
It’s on my list of issues to tackle them about and I think it’s an illegal charge. As I’m sure they wouldn’t make such charges - if any - on an incoming virement in Euros from France and ségrégation (eg different rates distinguishing between European countries), is illegal I’m pretty sure.
That’s strange. I think I’ve always been refunded by the same means when ordering online from Germany. In France in shops they usually ask for a CB to refund to, whether you paid with it or not, or give you a voucher. Online I think they refunded me by the same means, but that’s hardly ever happened.
I think I’m finally getting to the bottom of why there are /are not charges for receiving pensions and similar payments from the UK.
Having had several helpful exchanges with CA yesterday, it seems it is critical to check that the paying entity (eg a UK pension fund) makes the payment to France in euros via SEPA, the Single Euro Payments Area system. Such transfers should be entirely free, ie there should be no charge by the receiving bank, eg CA. This was confirmed by my account manager.
However if the paying entity uses the international SWIFT system, usually using Sterling to be converted into euros, but could equally be in euros, there is very likely to be a charge. In CA’s case, it’s 22,45€ per transfer. SWIFT is by far the most common transfer mechanism used worldwide.
Summary - always confirm with paying entity that transfers are to be made via SEPA, and not via SWIFT.
Very interesting George1. I’ll check that German transfer I have on my list to query with CA.
Though why anyone transferring from Germany to France would not use SEPA… hmmmmm.
