Is there an easier way?

brtemp, good to know. I think we'll be banking with HSBC. I'm hoping they have this service as well.

brtemp, good to know. I think we'll be banking with HSBC. I'm hoping they have this service as well.

We bank with HSBC. In my experience their wire transfer fees are high, and money (incoming) takes days to show up in your account. OUtgoing, they take the money, charge you a fee to do the transfer, and then about 3-4 days later it shows up in the US. Personally we are thinking of trying the PayPal route to avoid the bank, because it's no faster and I feel like there would be fewer fees (haven't actually sliced and diced the numbers yet though).

Thanks for the heads up

Probably a bit late on this one but when I first emigrated here, I tried transferring through my newly acquired UK HSBC account. They assured me the only fee was £30 unless my US account charged to receive funds. So when the money finally arrived in my US account, it was short. My US account charged no fees for receiving the funds and HSBC couldn't tell me where the missing money went (kept saying it must have been my US account). Long story short, HSBC did charge £30 for the transfer but they failed to mention that they are not permitted by US law (or so they told me when I kicked up a fuss) to send money direct to my US account (?) so instead it went from HSBC London to HSBC New York who then charged another transfer fee to get it to my US account.

The runaround and passing the blame for so long annoyed me so much I closed my HSBC account after that. I wouldn't have minded so much if they just told me from the start that I'd be charged twice (and then I would have looked elsewhere for a cheaper way). May be worth keeping this in mind when asking about transfer fees.

I use paypal at least for now.