My mother and I will be arriving in Paris in March and we have secured an apartment rental through Paris Best Lodge. Thierry accepts the payment in full for the rental either in cash or travelers check in Euros the day of our arrival.

We can either get a travelers check prior to leaving the U.S. from Bank of America and keep it safe during our first stop in London as well as pay all the fees the bank will stick us with OR I'm thinking we'd be better off going to the BNP (which is a partner with BofA and doesn't charge exchange fees) and withdraw the full amount in cash from a teller since there is a branch location near our apartment with Saturday hours.

So, for those of you who have been in this situation, what did you do? What do you recommend?

Thanks!

Well, I've not been in that situation since I rent from Vacation In Paris and pay with my credit card in US dollars.I think your best bet and the cheapest would be to get your bank to increase your withdrawal limit and then just use your ATM card at a BNP bank. You may have to do several transactions as there is a limit on each withdrawal. It may not even be necessary to find 2 BNPbranches. I doubt if you could go in and withdraw from a teller. Some BNP branches don't even have teller windows as they arefor commercial services and other functions.

Just make sure you inform your bank you'll be traveling to Paris before you depart and ask them to up your withdrawal limit to a much higher level. That will allow you to withdraw the amount you need for the payment on arrival AND cause you to make fewer withdrawals as you travel.

Have a great trip!

Definitely - use the bank ATM once you are in Paris. You won't pay ATM fees. The BofA will raise your daily limit if that's necessary. The machine probably won't let you take out enough in one transaction - but you can re-insert it and keep going. And since you won't have the fees, multiple transactions won't cost you extra.

I have done what you need, but I just used the ATM on arrival and could easily get enough as I have two cards -- my regular bank ATM card for my checking acct plus a money market ATM card from Capital one, I easily got what I needed.

I had an alternative backup FWIW -- I had US dollar travelers checks as a backup which I get free from my bank as a preferred customer. If I really couldn't have gotten the money from the ATM, I know good exchange places in Paris where I could have exchanged them for only about a 2-3 pct total fee. I've posted about that before, people who don't use TCs tend to not believe that, but I do know of such places and have used them for 20 years. And they are still there, as I stop by every time I'm in Paris to keep up with them.

So if you can get free USD travelers checks and want to know the place, it is Credit General de Bourse et de Change at 95, bd MOntparnasse. Closed weekends, though, and evenings, of course. If a real super emergency or you'd get tossed in the street and you didn't have the time or it was the wrong day, you can exchange TCs at the airport, of course -- but you pay about a 10-12 pct fee. But if you have to, you have to.

Those backup plans probably won't happen, but I just have them so if something goes wrong, it's not like I have no idea at all what to do. Well, I guess you could also take cash from your credit card, and that probably might cost you only 10 pct or so, I suppose (with the fees and interest). So that's another backup.

Thank you all so much for you advice. I think we'll be doing the ATM thing. And Christina, I appreciate the idea of a backup plan...I'm documenting the TC exchange in my files to have it on hand, just in case!

I would always advise paying upon arrival for a rental, not ahead of time. Our cousin in Germany wired the funds a few days before our Villa rental in Mallorca. We were to call a number upon arrival at the village and be escorted to our Villa. Four hours later that happened, but the cousins were at wits ends by that time, put a damper on the start of our holiday.
Christina - can you tell me more about the Capital One Money Market ATM card? No fees involved?