We've arranged our Vietnam hotels/drivers/guides through Tonkin Travel. They've offered us two options for paying the $500 deposit:

1- You can pay us by bank transfer to our account in VietNam, 30USD bank fee
will be plused

2- You can pay us by credit card, I will send you a credit card payment
form, you will fill in and sign in and resend with copy of card holder's
passport + 02 sides of credit card, 3% bank fee will be applied for Visa or
Master and 4% for Amex card.

We went to our credit union and they charge $35 for the bank transfer, so that's $65 in fees for the deposit. Seems very steep. I've been reluctant to send (email? fax?) the credit card info.

Anyone have experience with this? What do you recommend?

Thanks,

We paid them by credit card, sending the requested info. No problems.

We paid by credit card (two years ago), using the process Tonkin outlined in your #2. It worked fine for us--no issues. I photocopied the card and passport and sent Tonkin the copies as PDFs attached to an email. Naturally I was nervous about this but it worked fine--no issues. As a matter of course we do check our credit card statements every month to make sure there are no erroneous charges.

We paid by cc too. Faxed over the info as I didn't want all my personal details on an Email incase their servers were not secure. ( this was about 4 years ago)

My bank fee is $35 and Tonkin's is $30, so that's $65 - which seems really expensive. I think I'll go the credit card route, which will be $15.

Thanks, everyone.

cc for sure..

We've used them twice. Paid by credit card both times without any problems at all. Using a credit card also comes in handy if any of your pre-paid activities are cancelled and they need to issue a refund.

In my opinion, it is very safe to make a deposit via payapl. Additional fee is 4 percent of your total amount. It is so easy and very safe

I paid by credit card. Fee was 3 percent. So far, so good...

And I got my letter of approval for the visa. Keeping my fingers crossed that it won't hold us up too much when we arrive in Hanoi.