We're dead chuffed with them at the moment!
We've been sending our money via Abbey for the past two years and they've been charging us £25 per transaction, with Credit Agricole charging us €2.50 for receiving it its cost us a fortune!!
Well we decided that I had a Paypal account here and if Mrs Pepper set up an account on our French bank account then we could send money to and fro between us, last night we did it for the first time and the charge worked out at £2.50 (I said it was personal for paying household bills as I'm not lying)
What a difference though, I'll quite happily pay £2.50 per transaction thats fine with me indeed!
We have kept every single charge Abbey have made to us and if we ever get the judicial review over with Mr MoneySavingExpert.com then I reckon we'll try getting percentage of those charges back as they are a total rip off!
try sending smaller amounts more often and you may find there will be no charge at all!
I use paypal too for sending money to my own account back in the uk, for some reason banks (in canada) seem to have difficulty doing it and like you say charge a fortune.
nah epo, we tried a £100 last week and they charged us a £1 so it worked out cheaper to send the more in one go.
if I claimed it as a gift then it would be free, but its not playing fair, and I really don't mind paying a fair price for a reasonable service, they even gave us a decent exchange rate too.
Worth looking at loading up one of these for day to day money
Good fx rate & free to use in shops etc. $2 charge at ATMs