My husband and I recently returned from Switzerland where we left a packet at a restaurant. At our request, the restaurant returned the packet to us in the US. Now, we need to reimburse the person at the restaurant the amount of CSF spent on the package's return.
How do I do this? Any advise would be helpful.
Thank you!
Both open a Paypal account and send that way? I did that to send funds to Sicily.
Send a wire transfer through your bank or send the money via xe.com or use Xoom (a PayPal company). There are tons of online services that will transfer the money for you. For a one-time thing, I would just bite the bullet and pay the $30 fee that the bank will probably charge you and get your bank to do it instead of opening up accounts just to do this one transfer. Do you have the account information and the SWIFT code for the recipient's bank?
Thinking outside the box, it seems a shame to give a bank a big chunk of what has to be a reasonably small postage charge.
I like TransferWise which don't take too much, but a creative (fee-free) way might be to give the restaurant your credit card number and ask them to charge you for a meal.
We send money between two countries often but the fees from the banks are probably higher than what you are trying to reimburse. Since you said it was just the cost of the postage, it's probably a small amount. I'd go to your bank in the US and ask for Swiss Francs in the amount the person at the restaurant paid. If you would rather send it in US dollars, google the currency calculator and send the equivalent in US dollars. They can bring the US dollars to the bank here and exchange it for Swiss Francs. Get their address and send the cash inside of a card. They should have it within a week.
The problem is that sending money directly between accounts is the normal way to do it in Europe and is cheap. I can log into my online banking and send money to any account which has an IBAN (International Bank Account Number) in any currency I like. They have probably just assumed you can do this.
My guess is the account number they have given you is an IBAN.
If you do send money, do it in Swiss Franks (abbreviation: CHF, not CSF). If you send it in another currency they will have to pay a few Franks to convert, so to be polite you would have to add the cost of the conversion to the amount you sent.
If it is too expensive to send direct from your bank account, then giving them your credit card number is a good idea. Since the sent you the item without getting money up front, they are obviously honest.
While transmitting money from your account to another person's account may be cheap for those within Europe, that's not the case for many in the USA. Also, my experience with international transfer is that such transfers are successful about 50% the first go. A pain in the drain. Nigel's idea about the restaurant using the charge card route seems so simple and cheap for all.
How much money are we talking about here? Tens of dollars or hundreds of dollars? If the former, I'd just get foreign currency from a bank and send it by mail. After all, the packet was probably (hopefully) worth more and sent that way.
PayPal is the easiest, cheapest and safest way to send money. The fees are minuscule and are usually charged to the sendee, not the sender. Write and ask them, as you may have to increase the amount you are sending by a euro or two.
Ms. Jo, they use Franks in Switzerland, not Euros (as the Original Poster said). I would be surprised if a restaurant has a PayPal account.
I still go with Nigel's suggestion of a credit card payment. Or just post them some Franks cash, if you have enough.
