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I see that Spanish property insight recommends the La Caixa Bank. I recently transferred 60,000 euros from my Nat West bank in UK to the La Caixa bank in Ayamonte and La Caixa charged me 300 euros “landing fee”.. This was on top of the charges I had to pay Nat West. As you can imagine I do not recommend La Caixa
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Phantom Phixer.
I bank with La Caixa myself, having tried out other banks in Spain. I was satisfied, hence the recommendation. But the time has come to review, and I shall keep your comments in mind.
I completely understand your annoyance. Have you kicked up a fuss with the branch manager for a refund? Might work.
Whichever bank one deals with, one always have to agree these so-called “landing fees” in advance (also the fees they charge to issue bank guaranteed cheques). Most branch managers will agree to cap them in the 15-30 Euros range, or even less as Guest points out.
Mark
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Mark, I did take issue with the La Caixa manager in Ayamonte over this landing fee charge and he informed me this was normal practice. Also, when I had to pay the final payment on my villa to the notary the estate agent required a bankers draft. I obtained one from La Caixa also in Ayamonte and they charged me 200 euros for it. There must be a way to avoid paying these high charges. If you sell a property in Spain and want to get the money back to your bank in UK what is the best way to do it? If you transfer form one bank to another do they still insist on these horrendous charges, how much cash can you withdraw from La Caixa at any one time as I’m thinking the best way to transfer money is in cash in a bag.
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We’re with CAM, but, La Caixa come highly recomended up here particularly for Mortgages (Hipotecas)
Tony & Angie
@mark wrote:
Phantom Phixer.
I bank with La Caixa myself, having tried out other banks in Spain. I was satisfied, hence the recommendation. But the time has come to review, and I shall keep your comments in mind.
I completely understand your annoyance. Have you kicked up a fuss with the branch manager for a refund? Might work.
Whichever bank one deals with, one always have to agree these so-called “landing fees” in advance (also the fees they charge to issue bank guaranteed cheques). Most branch managers will agree to cap them in the 15-30 Euros range, or even less as Guest points out.
Mark
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Dear Phantom Phixer,
I’m really sorry to hear that you got clobbered by both the landing fees AND the banker’s draft charge.
How does one avoid these charges? Well, as one can already see from the comments on this thread, it depends upon the bank and the branch.
Some banks, like Halifax and Bankinter, have low fees or zero fees as standard. They have a small branch network and keep costs down, which means they can afford to charge low fees. But for some people, a small branch network can be a big disadvantage.
But even with banks like La Caixa – who by the way are far from the worst when it comes to fees – you can usually negotiate a limit to these fees – say 30 Euros per transaction – with the branch manager when you open an account. Otherwise you will pay standard rates, which are often 0.3% to 0.5% of the value of the transfer or banker’s draft.
So when opening an account with a bank, especially if there is a mortgage involved, ALWAYS make it clear to the manager that you do have a choice of banks, and will go somewhere else unless their charges are reasonable.
Regards getting your money back to the UK, start by clarifying exactly what they will charge you to make an international transfer. Please let me know. Make sure you don’t buy your Sterling from them though – banks always give bad rates. Buy your Sterling from a good currency broker.
Regards
Mark
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I had the recent misfortune of incurring extortionate charges levied by Banco Santander. We moved money from our Abbey National account to Banco Santander persuaded by the fact that Abbey is a subsidiary -big mistake. We were billed over 1000 euros for the privilege and then a further 500 euros for the ‘privilege’ of withdrawing it. When we queried this we were told that we should have negotiated a ‘price’ prior to sending the money. Since we were given no details when account was set up about charges and we were transferring money from UK to a branch we had only been to once before it was a bit rich for the advisor to suggest that a better rate could be achieved by negotiating over the phone. Who precisely with met with a deafening silence. Oh he did suggest that in the future other customers from the Abbey might get more favourable treatment. What I would like to know is how do businesses that transfer large sums of money survive. I am definitely looking for another bank – I simply can’t afford to stay with the Banco Santander. 😥
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Mark, Thanks for the information. I am going back to Spain next month to advertise my place with a few more estate agents and while I am there I will pop into La Caixa in Ayamonte and ask about charges for transferring money from UK and back. If I get no joy I will draw money out in cash and carry it home but I have been told by a friend the most you can draw from a Spanish bank in cash at any one time is 29,999 euros. Comments please.
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Make sure you give them plenty of notice!
When we went to a Marbella bank to cash a cheque for 6000 euros, they said we had to come back the next day as, due to some recent robberies, they don’t keep overmuch cash (?!). They said we should have given them 24 hours notice……
After a lot of pushing and pulling, they agreed to pay us if we came back nearer closing time that day, and if they had enough cash, they would pay us.
We did finally get our cash that day but we felt like we were trying to cash a cheque for 6 million!
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