Hi All

Just found out Nationwide bank have now started charging comission for withdrawing cash from ATM's and also charging £1 for the transaction. This started 1st November just seen my bank statement and have been charged £5.24 comisiion on withdrawing 300 euros (£261) and £1 for the transaction!

JaneS

Hi Jane

So your coming back to the UK on the 24th November, are you coming back to Hemel? Just in time for the British Winter.

Steve....

Yes Jane, one of the many reasons we decided to leave was when we found this out in August. They had started to charge outside of Europe but said they would not charge in Europe, seems they changed their minds. Makes a huge difference when you are living off UK money, as you well know. Hope it all goes well in Cyprus. Are the flights back home going to be OK, do easyjet go there?

We have a property in Halkidiki and have a Greek bank account. We save money up in the UK and then when the exchange rate goes up a bit we send a lump sum out via a UK currency broker (Smart Currency) and get a much better exchange rate than the banks give. We then use our Greek cash card to take out spending money from ATMs and avoid these high charges from UK banks. I feel sorry for those who have to rely on the UK bank rates and fees as it can really make an impact on an already poor exchange rate. Hoping the rate will go up soon as Greece is getting more expensive with the tax increases on petrol and VAT and the poor exchange rate desn't help us Brits!

The thing was LJ, that the nationwide was the most viable card to use for the last few years. No charges, no commission and the business exchange rate of the day. We got really good rates. They first started charging outside Europe, so it follows that they would do this at some stage, even though they said they would not.

Nothing, even using a broker, could be as good value as this once was. We were getting 1.22 in September, tho it fell a bit down to 1.19 by October. But better than the tourist rates.