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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/22/2023 4:23 PM, Jim Larsen via
E-trademarks wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:MW4PR22MB3112B951FB6568A4F291004EE8BAA@MW4PR22MB3112.namprd22.prod.outlook.com">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">I just
started using XE.com for U.S.->foreign transfers. No
(separate) wire fee. Indeed, the entire cost of the
transaction is built into the exchange rate. Example: I
recently sent payment to a Canadian firm. Spot rate was </span><span
style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Noto Sans",sans-serif;color:black;background:white">1
USD = 1.3405 CAD. My calculations suggest this is about
2.9% worse than public spot FX price (average of about 1.38
that day). So, similar to credit card fees for most
services for domestic transactions. Customer service (on my
admittedly low volume so far) was excellent. I had several
calls setting things up and they were very helpful.</span></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes I recall maybe it was fifteen years ago, American Express had
launched a money-transfer service (which then got shut down maybe
three years after launch). And the supposed great advantage of
their service over the competition (which in those days was WU and
your bricks-and-mortar bank) was "the entire cost of the
transaction is built into the exchange rate". But they did not
say it that way. What they said was "no foreign transfer fee" or
something like that. The main sales pitch was, we should switch
from our existing money transfer service provider over to American
Express because our existing service provider was surely charging
a foreign transfer fee, and if we are so smart to switch over to
American Express, we will never again have to pay a foreign
transfer fee.<br>
</p>
<p>We opened an account with American Express and we got ready to do
some foreign transfers.<br>
</p>
<p>I recall getting ready to pay some invoice of a trademark firm in
some foreign country. And the invoice was denominated in USD. So
my goal was to send some of my USD to some foreign country, to a
bank account of the foreign trademark firm. A USD account. <br>
</p>
<p>Of course one of the important things about any money-transfer
service provider is that hopefully they permit you to set up an
"address book" or "beneficiary book" or "recipient book". The
idea is you set things up with the name of the foreign firm, and
the bank details of the foreign firm, and you store it in the
book. And then once you have successfully sent a transfer one
time, you can have some guarded optimism that a second or third
transfer to the same "beneficiary" or the same "recipient".<br>
</p>
<p>So I clicked around and tried to set up the "recipient book"
information for this foreign trademark firm. And it seemed to be
impossible. I then phoned up the American Express company to try
to get tech support. The person who answered was absolutely
flummoxed and was not able to help very much. It seems that the
super smart people at American Express had not thought very much
about what happens if the foreign invoice that is being paid is
denominated in the same currency as the currency held by the
sender (us). Eventually they somehow figured out what to tell us
and where we were supposed to click to set up this "recipient
book" information, and we set it up. And the money transfer went
through. <br>
</p>
<p>And the foreign transfer fee was $45, something like that. It
was a gouge! Even our gouge bricks-and-mortar bank did not gouge
that much. Wells Fargo only gouged $42 at that time.</p>
<p>After we did a few bake-offs (paying the same recipient once
using American Express and again using our previous service
provider) it became clear that American Express was indeed gouging
us on every transfer. The $45 gouge for the actual transfer of
the money was hidden away in the currency exchange rate. I guess
they figured that either (a) we would not notice the gouge, or (b)
we were paying on behalf of some client and we would be glad to
pay the gouge fee so long as we could pass it along to our
unsuspecting client.</p>
<p>Anyway, after two or three years, American Express quietly shut
down that service. By then we had moved along to whoever the next
provider was -- maybe it was Travelex.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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