My experience transferring money from US checking to UK current account.

We moved the last of our money yesterday and it arrived in our UK account this morning, we got $1.52. we move out of our home this weekend and spend our last few days in a motel closer to family until we fly on 20th..

All the very best for the move.  Exciting times.

Now all we need is a house. My wife's oldest son has a little 2 bedroom in an iffy area of Huddersfield we can borrow for a while. This is our favorite at the moment......top of the budget though....and a little too big for us.  http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-33523227.html?premiumA=true

That house does look nice.  Good luck with the move, hope you don't have too long in the temporary accommodation.

I transferred directly from my CU in the US to Barclay's here in the UK. It was kind of a PITA because my bank wanted me to sign/scan a form to them and then confirm by phone that I approved the wire, which meant I had to call them several times over skype for it to go through. The original paperwork was wrong as they mixed up my account number and the SWIFT Code on the form, so they had to generate it again, which meant more scanning/faxing/phone calls. During this process, I transferred $1000 through paypal to my DH and he then transferred it to my UK account and it took about 20 minutes and we got a 1.51 exchange (this was over the Easter weekend). It only cost me $5 through Paypal.

The wire transfer cost me $30 from my CU, 6GBP from Barclays and I only got a 1.52 exchange rate, so I think next time I will just transfer a bit at a time through Paypal. I'm only doing a few thousand at a time, so not massive amounts.

I transferred directly from my CU in the US to Barclay's here in the UK. It was kind of a PITA because my bank wanted me to sign/scan a form to them and then confirm by phone that I approved the wire, which meant I had to call them several times over skype for it to go through. The original paperwork was wrong as they mixed up my account number and the SWIFT Code on the form, so they had to generate it again, which meant more scanning/faxing/phone calls. During this process, I transferred $1000 through paypal to my DH and he then transferred it to my UK account and it took about 20 minutes and we got a 1.51 exchange (this was over the Easter weekend). It only cost me $5 through Paypal.

The wire transfer cost me $30 from my CU, 6GBP from Barclays and I only got a 1.52 exchange rate, so I think next time I will just transfer a bit at a time through Paypal. I'm only doing a few thousand at a time, so not massive amounts.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would do it the same way for smaller amounts either.  I needed to get a large amount transferred and I kept running into issues with that.  It was just nice to know it was doable, and once I got going the process wasn't near as long as I'd thought it would be.

There sure are a lot of numbers involved in the transfer though!    Super easy to get them mixed up.