Sorry to hear you’re going through a rough time. Hope you come to some decision soon as to where you’re going to live in future. Feel free to PM me.
Same, our house is one the market and we are down sizing to buy a smaller one, but due to timing difficulties are having to empty our uk emergency fund . The rest of the time are comfortably off, but last big transfer was prob 20 years ago!
I gave Lumon a try back a few months ago and found them quick and efficient.
We will likely use them again when we complete our house sale in rhe coming weeks.
Our selling agent recommended another currency exchange outfit called Worldwide Currencies but to be honest when thier agent contacted me he came across as a bit of a wide boy and made me think I couldn’t trust him with a bag of beans.
Lumon are very professional however I did find that they dont give advice on the best time to exchange, presumably so they don’t get the blame if the rate exchange then goes against you.
That’s fine by me as there is plenty of online advice out there and watching the currency market daily you soon get a feel of any drastic currency movement.
Having a human being to talk to at Lumon is a big plus.
That’s great to know. I understand they don’t have an online currency converter that would let you see the rate John. How does it work? Would you check, say, Wise to see what they’re offering on any given day and then email your designated account manager at Lumon to see what they’re offering?
No possibility of waking up in the middle of the night, noticing the pound has fallen (maybe because there’s an alert on your phone) and quickly booking a transfer without having to wait for a reply to an email?
Exactly that. I have a wize account and get daily updates on currently movement.
When I used Lumon I also got a Wize rate and Lumon was better.
The amount I exchanged was not insignificant but not house sale size.
My contact there did advise that when we have sold our house the amount involved would trigger various ways they could maximise the exchange rate, I will be interested to find out how.
Now we are well down the road of our house sale I will give them a call next week to discuss my options.
From my last transaction I was comforted that thier holding Bank is a Paris based Barclays account and even after my euros were deposited there if I had chosen to later use another transfer company Lumon would return my euros without charge.
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Excellent. TorFx’s German bank seemed to be completely flummoxed by the arrival of euros from the Soc Gen.
Apologies to everyone for going slighty ‘off-topic’ - but interesting reads because I may have similar questions in next near future.
(Thank you SuePJ for those good ideas; hadn’t thought of the 3Age although I’m very well aware of it - it’s just that I don’t know where I’ll end up - and don’t want to start forming friendships only to have to leave them - if that makes sense. But thank you for a bit of a very gentle reminder that there are activities that should help me. Sadly, I do get the ‘winter blues’ quite badly and have tried many ways to get myself out of the ‘hole’ when we lived in UK; facing a few more winter months here isn’t the best of prospects…….. !! Thank you for support.)
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(Thank you Helenochka - might well do so - thanks).
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Just to say I did a trial run with Lumon yesterday and all went very smoothly.
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We completed our new house purchase today with half the funds coming from our credit agricole livrets, etc and half from UK savings. For the UK side we used Lumon.
Chalk and cheese!
CA drove us mental and made the whole process super stressful, with ridiculous requirements given that we have been their customers for 25 years, and impossible to get hold of our account manager easily when they went totally silent on us at a critical moment. And everything was already in euros!
Lumon was so straightforward, despite doing a number of trades to capture the best of rotten exchange rates, and needing each to do this separately as buying in tontine so wanted a solid paper trail just in case.
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Congratulations !
Well done! 
All the very best for your new adventure.
Hooray!
Phew… well done!
Congratulations Jane.
Having used Lumon in the summer without issue I spoke with them earlier this week about our house sale as they had previously intimated they could help when the time came.
Lumon use a Barclays holding account which holds your money in your name until the exchange is made so your money is safe.
Lumon have provided us with a RIB for this account together with a french worded document to give to our notaire instructing them to send our sale proceeds directly to the Barclays holding account therefore avoiding, in our case, Cred Ag.
Unike your sterling to euro transaction dropping like a stone we are eagerly awaiting the Uk November budget in the hope that we will get even more £ for our euros that we had originally planned.
Congratulations! Wishing you many, many happy times in your new home!
And I’m very pleased to hear all went smoothly with LUMON
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John
Can one send money to the Barclays account to be held there for a short period and then agree a rate? Or does the rate have to be agreed before you send it?
We sent them money to hold. No interest on it obviously but seemed safe. We could have done forward contracts, but in the end decided to do a series of spot trades every time the pound lifted its head off the floor.
Yes, you are in charge.
That’s good to know. Thanks to you both. And congratulations on your purchase Jane.
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