wire transfers

Probably safer as long as you know that everything at that end is square. I am sure they are asking for a bank wire transfer -- bank to bank. It will be expensive.

Banks will charge you for the wire transfer and most likely your agritourismo's bank will charge them as well. I believe that it was $35-$40 for my end. Both costs will be added to the cost of your deposit. Believe it or not, most of your banks, including my BofA don't know how to do this. They give you a form for you to fill out and you assume all responsibility for the info you enter including Swift money transfer numbers and the AgriT's account number. My branch did not know how to fill out the form. I could have gone to a larger main branch where money wires are more common but I was successful, after a few e-mails, to get them to agree to show up with full cash in hand. This type of money transfer is not common unless you deal with a bank or Western Union that frequently transfers money to a neighboring country to our immediate south.

I went thru this hassle the last time we reserved a B&B in Italy. My banked charged a large fee, and the receiving bank charged a large fee. I did not find out about the receiving bank's fee until some time later, and had to make that up when we arrived.

I have since found a grocery store! that does the wire transfers for pennies (they do this as a service to their Hispanic customers), so you could look into this. At least one end of the fee would be reasonable.

And my bank dropped their fee to a very small amount (WaMu)

Ask if the take Paypal. No I'm not joking. I rented apartments last year in Italy and the landlords took my deposit with paypal. It was super easy to trasfer Euros.

My saga (still unsuccessful) started March 02, when I initiated a transfer to the owner of a place in Cornwall, UK. It turns out that BofA employees have no idea if the info you supply is correct or complete. The info goes from the local branch of BofA to their wire transfer department, then to the overseas bank (Lloyd's in my case). It's been over a week now, and I'm ready to pull my hair out. I was told it would take 24-48 hours. Incidentally, BofA charged a $35 fee plus an exchange rate that was 5% above the going rate as listed at xe.com. It would've been better to get some sort of bank check in the desired currency and mail it. The USPS charges about $28 for 5 day delivery. I wonder if any others have had experience with that approach.

Richard,

If you need to transfer money in the future, I recommend that you open an account with www.xe.com/fx. Money will be taken from your checking account by electronic transfer and a bank draft in the currency of your choice will be sent by US mail directly to the recipient of your choice. The exchange rate will be only slightly higher than the international rate on the day the transaction is initiated. There are no other fees. For faster service you can do a wire transfer, but that will cost more. For security reasons it takes some time and effort to set up an account, but everything goes swiftly and smoothly after that.

Thanks for all your replies. I ended up using my credit union for the wire transfer and the agroturismo had it 3 days later. Total cost was about 50 dollars - 35 on my end and 15 in Italy. But I got the place I wanted to stay in for 2 weeks. I did not account for the Italian bank fees so I will be paying that after I arrive. My concern was that the money would be sent from here and then lost in limbo someplace with no recourse on recovery, but it turned out to be much less hassle than I anticipated.