On Nov 27, 2004, at 21:59, Eileen Lee wrote:
I am headed to the lacemaker's fair in Birmingham, England in a few days.
Does anyone know if the vendors will take a Visa credit card, or should I
try to have British currency with me?
Some vendors (the bigger ones, usually) will take Visa, but many will not, so cash in hand is a good idea.
Do not exchange your money here; you'll be paying banking fees twice, and your rate of exchange is likely to be horrible. Do not take travelers checks in pound sterling *or* dollars for the same reasons.
Prime up your savings account, and take your debit/check card with you. ATMs are spread all over Europe, so cash-access is easy. Just memorise your password *in numbers*, not in letters or position on the keyboard, to avoid nasty surprises :) And *pay attention to the instructions* as they appear on the screen - they're not always the same as those you see in US (I've known some Americans who tried to withdraw money from Polish machines and, when it didn't work quite as what they were used to, leave the place thinking the machine was out-of-order. The next person after them collected the cash, but the funds were withdrawn from their account)
Don't use your Visa to draw cash from ATMs - on top of the standard fee your bank charges for using an "alien" machine (around $2.00 per transaction), you'll be paying interest on a loan (or balance - depends on how the bank set up your card) by the time you get home.
Because of the standard fee (and, in some cases, the bank which owns the ATM will charge one also. Usually, those machines will *say so*. Cancel the transaction and find another machine <g>), it makes sense to make bigger withdrawals, less frequently. Set yourself a dollar limit ("I don't want to spend more than X"), then double it if you can afford it - I've never been to NEC, but I have been to other fairs, and they're *huge* and very tempting, and I've always spent more than I planned, though not more than I had deposited in the savings before leaving US <g>. Convert that to GBP:
http://www.xe.com/ucc/
and withdraw that amount. If some of the vendors do use Visa, you'll be sure to spend the cash elsewhere (tea, transport, etc)...
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
- To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
