Anyone on here got any advice on transferring to a French bank account?

We’ve booked a hotel, and the owner has requested a deposit be transferred to their account and supplied me with all the relevant IBAN number.

The problem is my bank (Santander) want £25 to do the transfer, but I’m only trying to send them either 30euros, or maybe the 100euros for the full amount, and it seems a waste to incur that amount of charge.

Any ideas chaps and chapesses?

Explain what’s it’s going to cost to send the money and ask if they’ll take a reservation without deposit. If they refuse find another Hotel with a secure Internet reservation system.

Madame, Monsieur,

Suite à votre demande d’un acompte de 30e pour notre réservation du –/–/– à –/–/–, j’ai pris contact avec ma banque. Ils m’imposent £25 de frais pour effectuer le virement, à peu près équivalent au montant viré.

Dans ces circonstances pourriez-vous accepter la réservation sans acompte ou me proposer un moyen de paiement moins onéreux ?

Veuillez agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l’expression de mes sentiments les meilleurs.

Cant you just pay the deposit via Credit Card?

What Jam bo said

Or Paypal as the fees are considerably lower than for a SWIFT payment?

Ask your bank why you can’t make a SEPA payment. My bank charges me about 20p for Europe wide transfers via the SEPA system but I heard that UK banks are very slow to adopt this new standard.

“This is specifically relevant for countries that do not use the euro, as domestic transfers in euro by consumers are extremely uncommon there, so inflated fees might be charged.”

I make SEPA transfers to Germany from France it costs me 2e but when my wife made a transfer to the UK we got stung for about 25e as we had to use a normal IBAN tansfer.

Cheers guys, I’d asked about card over the phone and paypal but was awaiting a response. The response I got was ‘forget the deposit we’ve booked the room’

Roll on the holiday!

Thanks again!

CHF to EUR here and still costs 20p. Must be one of those rare occasions where something is cheap in Switzerland