Ok, a serious question from me and the soon to be Mrs. Charlz.
I am traveling in about 6 weeks and been looking at options with regard to foreign currency exchange. I have considered vaious options and up until today my preffered option was as follows; take my Westpac Visa debit card. Advantages are:
- No withdrawal fee for each transaction
- It's safe. I can transefer only the money I require via internet banking to the relevant account and then withdraw in local currency from any bank that accepts visa.
- The money comes straight out of my everyday account and is not considered a cash advance as on a normal credit card.
Upon significant further investigation I have discovered the following:
- A 1.5% currency conversion fee is attracted on each withdrawal - no big deal
- I checked with westpac today as they do not advertise Rupiah rates on their website and to my horror I discovered, that if I had withdrawn money from an ATM today then the rate would have been 7001 rupiah to the dollar (aus).
I beleieve although am not sure, that if I was in Bali and had gone to a kodak shop I would have got 7400 rupiah to the dollar (aus). If this is so then even with the (so called) zero transaction fee I would be nearly 5% worse off by using the visa debit card.
My other option is to buy AUS$ travellers cheques here and then convert as I need whilst in Bali.
Cash is not an option as we are taking a fairly large amount and I would not feel comfortable.
So my questions are as follows;
In your experience, what is the most cost effective way of converting to rupiah?
What is the current rate for buying Rupiah (in AUS$'s) at a kodak shop in Bali?
What is the current rate if using travellers cheques instead of cash?
What fees are charged by the kodak shops? And is this different if exchanging cheques?
I believe I can buy AUS$ cheques for zero fee at Australia Post shops so obviously they make their money from the foreign exchange dealer cashing the cheques - what I need to know is how is this passed back to me from the kodak shops?
I feel safer with travellers cheques so would be happy to pay a little more. Using an Australian debit or cashcard is oout of the question given the below market rates they offer.
In your hands.
Charlz