At 11:04 AM +0000 9/3/02, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 22:37:16 +1200
>From: "Brian Swale" <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] ( OM ) off - topic - *ay*al
>
>Hi folks
>
>I've entered uncharted territory (for me) this week. Selling things and being
>paid via PayPal. Quite a learning curve. ( I mentioned once or twice before
>that I am also a fern nut, and in my spare time (with a friend) I have
>produced
>a complete list of all the ferns of the world, about 12,800 of them, along
>with
>their synonyms (alternative scientific names), geographic distribution,
>references and so forth. I sell this on CDROM now.).
>
>I think for USA citizens it is a lot more straight forward, but for me living
>outside the USA there are a few hurdles to jump. For a start, all currencies
>get converted to USA dollars. I wanted to be paid in New Zealand dollars. No
>go. This means I have to pay the cost of currency conversion (in addition to a
>fee for this which amounts to about 50n 60 - 70 dollars NZ.). That seems
>straight forward enough? They say they use the up-to-date exchange rates.
>
>I'd like to know WHOSE up-to-date exchange rates. Not those of ebay. Not
>those of the online currency converter I use <http://www.xe.com/ucc/>. Not
>those in my daily newspaper. They pitch the rate about 5% to my
>disadvantage; for example if the average rate is about 1:2.13588, they used
>1:2.0249.
The New York exchange rate as of 30 August 2002 (published by the Wall Street
Journal on 3 September 2002) is NZ $2.1290 NZ for US $1.0000. The rate varies
randomly from day to day. This is the rate used for inter-bank transfers.
Big credit-card companies get the interbank rate, so paying by credit card and
letting the card company convert the currency is often the best approach.
On the same day, the rate was 1.0174 Euro to US $1.0000.
>I ended up losing 14.5 0n the whole transaction which included queueing
>my funds to be transferred from the PayPal bucket to my bank in New
>Zealand. It seems I can't even get a PayPal Mastercard and take the funds
>out locally using an ATM. 5% would have been OK in my view, but 14.5 0s
>far too much, in my opinion.
Oof -- 14.5 0s robbery. Just like the VAT in many parts of Europe.
Joe Gwinn
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