XE Trade

We faxed our documents to XE and it took just a day or 2 set up. Great customer service too.

i scanned my documents and e-mailed them to XE.  I had an phone call appointment set up with them within 24 hours to verify all the information i had e-mailed.  it was pretty painless. 

however, i think i should have just given you my exact figures in my last post.  they gave me an exchange rate of .54121011 and i did my own calculations to turn it the other way around....but i guess i was off a bit.  my transfer on wednesday was 300GBP = 554.31USD.

I think you calculated correctly, that is 1.8477.
I think XE is going for a no-charge worse exchange rate whereas Interchange is going for a charging but better exchange rate to effectively cancel each other out.  In any case, they both sound like good services and there's probably not much difference between the 2 ultimately.

What they both have over the banks is a much cheaper service for their customers!

Thanks to everyone for all the helpful information regarding XE here.  I have set up my account with them, and added my US account where I intend to send some funds.  I've also set up a digital account with my new bank here, RBSI.  However, when I accessed it on line, and went to transfers, it said my account was not set up for that.  So, I guess I'll need to go in to the branch to request a BACS transfer now.  Does anyone else have experience with Royal Bank of Scotland International?  I am hoping not to hit any snags, as this has all gone well so far. 

Never mind, lol.  Got it all straight now.  Thanks again.

Bumping this a bit... I've not found the answers to:

1)  Should I wait til I get back to the US to set up an account on xe trade (not sure what to put when it asks for an address - US or UK?)?

2)  If I have an HSBC account in the UK, should I set one up in the US and just transfer money that way instaead of using xe trade? (I currently have a credit union, which I would keep also)

I know this thread is about XE trade.. but I checked out both XE trade and MoneyCorp (and a few others) when i was looking for a way to transfer money from UK to US bank account and Moneycorp gave me a better rate locked in for 2 years.  Although XE trade was still great... dont be afraid to shop around.  In my case, Im making $25 more per transfer... which are done once a month so $300 more per year through moneycorp. 

2)  If I have an HSBC account in the UK, should I set one up in the US and just transfer money that way instaead of using xe trade? (I currently have a credit union, which I would keep also)

I don't really think there's any advantage to setting up an HSBC account for the purpose of transferring money. HSBC UK and HSBC US pretty much operate like separate banks--i.e., they still charge you a pile for the privilege of transferring money. When we transferred money from our US HSBC account to our UK HSBC account we had to pay a wire transfer fee to get the money out and another fee to get the money in, plus whatever the currency conversion cost. But using XEtrade to transfer from UK to US we don't have to pay any fees if everything is done electronically. And they claim to have better exchange rates, although I've not investigated that.

Thank you...

Now I gotta look around???

Chrissy, do you not pay for a transfer each time?  I thought it said something about £15 per transfer.

I still have question 1... should I set this up now, or wait til I'm back in the US (or does it matter)?

Moneycorp I pay £4 per transfer but I am getting a better exchange rate than with which XE so im making £12.5 more on each transfer with the better exchange rate so Im still £8.5 better off each month with Moneycorp despite the fee (£12.5-£4=£8.5). Something to think about..  It does depend how much you transfer each month... i transfer a fair bit... if you are only looking to transfer a small amount each month this may not work in your favor.  You'll have to do the math.

Chrissy, do you not pay for a transfer each time?  I thought it said something about £15 per transfer.

It may be £15 for a one time money transfer but if you set up a plan with them where you sign up for 2 years to transfer a set amount of money each month.. the fee is reduced.. in my case to £4 per transfer.

I set up my money transfer while i was in the UK without a problem.. I would suggest you do it ASAP because the exchange rate is extremely high at the moment and if it goes down you'll lose out.  Who knows, it may go up more in a few months, but I wouldent risk it because its the highest its been in a long time.

Hope this isnt too confusing... good luck! 

Depends on how soon you need your money. It does take a while to set up. We did ours before we left the US.

Thanks again.
Thing is, I'm now going the other way (moving back to the U.S.) and need to set this up to keep my U.K. account active, but probably not a set amount each month.

I guess that was a little too terse! What I meant was, if you're going to need access to the money in your UK account (or to be able to put money in the account) immediately, you should definitely go ahead and set it up ASAP. Otherwise it might make sense to wait until you're re-established in the US. But it shouldn't be a problem to set it up while you're still here, even though you're moving. That's what we did (going the other direction)--we used our US address because we didn't have a UK address yet.

Sorry for not being clearer! 

Ah, got it.  It wasn't 'terse'

Just when I think I've got things figured out... there's always something more I don't know.
I'm having flashbacks of when I first moved here!

Hello
I don't know if anyone is still following this thread, but I just read through it and found it really useful. I signed up to XE trade and just initiated my first transaction. Thanks to the thread (ie using BACS) I think I've avoided additional fees.

However, I am now really unclear on whether or not I got a good rate. I feel really stupid for not knowing this myself and wondered if anyone can tell me how/where you find out whether or not you've gotten a good rate. I was offered USD/GPB at 0.49816551 the market is showing .490195.

Any thoughts greatly appreciated!
Mimsy