Bank of Ireland money transfer hidden fees?

alexsmile

Hi,
I was sending recently money from Bank of Ireland (BOI) to my account in China. Ive sent only 10e to test the transfer, I paid 12e to BOI which was debited from account straight away ( that was only fee I was informed about ) and instead of receiving 10e ( approx 77 yuan ) I got only 0.1 yuan which is less then a cent.

I got a guy in my Chinese bank to make some phone calls and he said that the money has been received from Royal bank of Scotland (RBS) and not from BOI, so they probably took the additional fee (9.99e).
I had a look on RBS transfer fees and its 22 pounds which they even couldn't take coz I only sent 10e. but they still sent me at least 1/4 of cent just to make the transaction complete.
I rung BOI 365 couple of times and all had a same answer : "The international transfer are out of our hands and U should ask your Chinese bank why money goes through the Scotland."
Basically they said , once it goes out from their door , they r not responsible what happen to my money.
Obviously Chinese bank has no clue why money comes from Scotland and not from Ireland where I was originally sending them and therefore they have no control of it what so ever.
The guy in Customer service in RBS told me that I should ring BOI and ask for manager, which probably Im going to do next call.

My friend had a similar story with BOI , sending money to the Czech Republic when money went via some german bank where additional fees was also applied. She went to BOI head office to complain and she got that fee back after because supposed to be no fee within EU at all.
My Chinese friends who sent money from Ulster Bank have no problem at all and money go right away to China. So it looks like BOI is using a different bank for actual international money transfers. ( I was reading on net , that some banks which r not equipped for int.money transfer that kind of type ..out of EU , use bigger banks to do it for them. )
Im in China at the moment so cant go to the head office and complain, and at this stage Im not even looking for my money back, but just want to find out what is the actual fee all together?
Is it 12e from BOI and then 22 pounds from RBS? thats quite lots of money for 1 transfer!
........so I was wondering if anybody have a similar experience and any suggestion what to do?
Cheers

Nervous Wreck

Firstly...

alexsmile wrote: »

Bank of Ireland money transfer hidden fees?

... have you checked the T&Cs of your account to see if these fees are listed? Cos if they are, they're not 'hidden'.

alexsmile wrote: »

Hi,
I was sending recently money from Bank of Ireland (BOI) to my account in China. Ive sent only 10e to test the transfer, I paid 12e to BOI which was debited from account straight away ( that was only fee I was informed about ) and instead of receiving 10e ( approx 77 yuan ) I got only 0.1 yuan which is less then a cent.

I got a guy in my Chinese bank to make some phone calls and he said that the money has been received from Royal bank of Scotland (RBS) and not from BOI, so they probably took the additional fee (9.99e).
I had a look on RBS transfer fees and its 22 pounds which they even couldn't take coz I only sent 10e. but they still sent me at least 1/4 of cent just to make the transaction complete.

Transfers outside of the EU generally go through a 3rd party bank and there's always a fee. Generally, banks tell you explicitly about this but, if they don't, it's almost certainly listed in the T&Cs. Dunno why they wouldn't explicitly tell you about it though; seems like it'd just create a bigger headache for themselves...

alexsmile wrote: »

I rung BOI 365 couple of times and all had a same answer : "The international transfer are out of our hands and U should ask your Chinese bank why money goes through the Scotland."

This guy is an idiot and should know that they use an intermediary bank.

alexsmile wrote: »

Basically they said , once it goes out from their door , they r not responsible what happen to my money.

This is true. They will instruct the 3rd party to send the money to the account you have designated and that's their obligation filled.

alexsmile wrote: »

Obviously Chinese bank has no clue why money comes from Scotland and not from Ireland where I was originally sending them and therefore they have no control of it what so ever.

This is true but the fee can be split between the sending and receiving banks so they could know more than that. They will generally always know that an intermediary has been used.

alexsmile wrote: »

The guy in Customer service in RBS told me that I should ring BOI and ask for manager, which probably Im going to do next call.

Not a bad idea.

alexsmile wrote: »

My friend had a similar story with BOI , sending money to the Czech Republic when money went via some german bank where additional fees was also applied. She went to BOI head office to complain and she got that fee back after because supposed to be no fee within EU at all.

Not necessarily true.

BuffyBot

Also, the receiving bank may charge a fee which would be deducted from the balance. The intermediary bank (if there is one) should not be charging any extra fees.

You would be better off asking BOI, which I see you've done. Please don't start duplicate threads.