La Caixa receiving funds charge?

[concorde]

Does anyone know if La Caixa charges for receiving funds from a U.K. based account ?
This would euros not sterling.

They seem to charge for everything else!

I don't keep much in the account, only for utility bills, etc and bank charges! We top it up when we are over by withdrawing from ATM's from our FairFX card which charges 1.5e per transaction, and I withdraw the maximum of 300e when needed.
If I had an emergency I would use my Nationwide debit card account, slightly higher charges but still useful.
However I see know they are offering FairPay, a service which sends euros over, not too bad a rate of exchange at the moment and a mimimum of 600e. They do not charge anything for the transaction but foreign banks might, as they kindly point out.

It would seem to save a lot of faffing about but it depends if I get stung by having receiving fees.

[Mowser]

No idea but I'm dumping this bank. Their monthly charge is now up to €2.

[Stoker]

Can't answer your question but Cajamar have no charges except for renewing non-residency every two years.

Also check out Currency Fair (www.CurrencyFair.com) for buying and transferring euros at commercial exchange rates.

[concorde]

Thanks Stoker, I know I should really change banks but in our village/small town, La Caixa have a couple of English speaking staff, very useful at times.

We get charged account maintenence and for a debit card, about 50 euros per year, and great on-line banking. So really, for just under 1 euro per week versus the hassle of changing direct debits etc I'll stick with them.

Everyone has to pay the non-residency charge so I don't really count that, and La Caixa actually charge less than some other banks for once.

The CurrencyFair site is very useful thanks, and at least it is regulated, which is more than I can say for another shady bunch, who are out on bail again, but hopefully behind bars soon.

The exchange rate is equal to FairFx by the time you factor in their £3 fee but it's always handy to have a reserve company.
I know when we first bought our Spanish house, the agent helped us open with La Caixa, got a lovely red 100% polyester bath towel and a pack of playing cards as a welcome gift

We transferred over the deposit and then the remainder and negotiated a rate then for them receiving it but not sure about now.

[gus-lopez]

Yes they do charge , up to 0,4 of %. The easiest way of sending money is to use internet banking. I use hsbc for up to 10k , ' click sender to pay all charges ' which is usually £9 & the rate is near on wholesale & it arrives this end in minutes in your account.No charges.
They use the The Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) system.
When I used to transfer money by broker I went & saw the manager & told him I wanted the charges reduced. More or less cut it to nothing !

[concorde]

Thanks for that gus-lopez.

Somehow thought they would, think i'll stick to my original methods.

[oliveview01]

We banked with La Caixa, we had been charged the quarterly maintenance and for our debit cards, we then changed branches and were charged again for account maintenance etc, it worked out to over 100€ for the year. We went into the new local branch to tell them we had already paid the charges at our old branch, he told us the new charges were for the new branch, the other charges were for the old branch! He refused to refund any of it, we closed the bank account, the man could not have cared less
We are going to open a BBVA account, no charges and if you transfer money within the EU no charges there either. We have a Unicaja account, to keep the account in credit we pay 28€ a year plus 10€, or is it 15€ per debit card and if they send 'receipts' to say a DD has come out of the account they charge 35c per letter, we have managed to stop most of the post. We were paying around 75€ a year charges for always having an account in credit! BBVA here we come!

[peteroldracer]

We are going to open a BBVA account, BBVA here we come!

We had a problem with BBVA a few years ago, when the 46,000 ptas that we had deposited by bankers' draft was credited as 4.6 ptas.....the cheque we had given our builder bounced, he got charged 10% of the transaction, we got charged the same, and when we flew over to sort it out, the manager in Velez shrugged and said that errors happen, and that they knew about it the next day because the books didn't balance with head office....
They had taken no action, and it took a fight to get them to repay the chrages to us and our builder.
I closed the account, said I would go to the highest authority if they insisted on charging a fee to close, and asked them for an apology.
They said there was nothing to apologise for.
We have been happily with Cajamar ever since.

[El Cid]

We are going to open a BBVA account, no charges and if you transfer money within the EU no charges there either.

Are you sure? The free transfers which all banks have to offer are within the Eurozone - not the EU. In other words, no currency exchange involved.

Sid

[anyroads]

La Caixa have never charged me when I have transferred funds via HIFX.

From memory there is an annual account maintenance of eur 30. When we opened the account originally ( a joint account ) we were charged 12EUR each for our debit cards. Now that this has increased to 23EUR each, I have cancelled one card.

As an ex UK banker, it grates me to pay any charges, but I suppose their online setup is not bad.

anyroads

[Mike.M]

I'm with BBVA and they don't charge for receiving money from the UK, as long as it's less than 50k Euros ...... a few months ago the Spanish banking system put up transaction charges for ammounts 50k and over. If you want to transfer more, then break it up into multiple transactions of less than 50K.

You can find the BBVA T&C's on their site.

Regards,

Mike