How does this work? I put the order not quite through, to see how much it would cost me- and of course they show my total in pounds. Will the good folks at Mastercard do all the conversions? Will I freak when I see the conversion?
Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
Your bank will likely charge you a conversion fee. Call your bank and ask what it will be ahead of time. For some currencies & banks, it's a flat fee; for others, it's a percentage.
Posted by romanylass (Member # 6306) on :
Thanks!
Posted by Amilia (Member # 8912) on :
I bought Harry Potter CDs from amazon.uk.co back in 2004 because I wanted Stephen Fry reading. Mastercard did all the conversions for me. I don't remember if they charged a fee or not, and it has now been so long that I cannot go back and look at my statement to tell you.
If you want a rough gestimate on what it would be, just double the price. So 15 GBP would be about 30 USD.
Posted by anti_maven (Member # 9789) on :
I occasionally do the reverse and Visa/Mastecard takes care of everything. The only downside is the shipping which is sometimes more than the item being purchased...
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
The upside to using your card is that Visa at least gives you the best exchange rate of the day when they process the charges. I'd assume MasterCard would have to as well to compete, but we don't offer them at work, so I'm not sure.
Posted by Uprooted (Member # 8353) on :
If you want to get a rough estimate, google "currency converter."
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I used to order from there regularly when there was a gap between the UK and US launch of Discworld books, and there are still Discworld books you can only get overseas (an annual journal, diary, rulebook, or whatever with great illustrations and original content.) Haven't noticed any staggering charges.
Posted by romanylass (Member # 6306) on :
Thank you Chris, for giving me something else to order from overseas Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
Echoing what others have said -
According to Rick Steves (travel guides), Visa and Mastercard will always give you the best exchange rate. Even a withdrawns, say from Barclay's cash machine will give you a better rate that walk into Barclay's and exchanging money.
Here is a handy conversion source for everything including currency -
As noted by others shipping is what will kill you. It's best to select the cheapest shipping method possible. UPS/DHL/FedEx seem nice but they are not cheap. Common postal delivery is best.
Right now the conversion between USA and UK is about 2-to-1; one pound is about two dollars (1:2.042363).
Steve/BlueWizard
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
I don't recall being charged a fee, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention.
You can actually just google convert 10 pounds to dollars and google will spit right out, in bold letters, "10 British pounds = 20.31100 U.S. dollars." You can do lots of conversions that way. For instance, 6 meters = 2.00138457 × 10^-8 light seconds, in case you were curious. I love Google. Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
The last time I ordered something from a foreign site, my credit card company charged me something like 81 cents for the currency conversion. I'm not sure if that was a percentage off the purchase (which came to about 27 dollars) or if that's a flat fee.
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