HI, We are in the process of booking 2 nights at the Villa Rosa Convent in Rome. In order to reserve the rooms Sr Christina has requested that we pay for the first night. Her e-mail gave me an address to mail a check to. I have no idea how to go about doing this? Is this normal? I realize that most of the monasteries/convent do not accept credit cards. Does anyone know the best way to do this without getting ripped off in fees?
Thanks
Bill

Are you sure they requested a check and not payment through a service such as Western Union or Wells Fargo? You can't just write a check in Euro. You will either have to make arrangements with your bank or use WU, WF or some other type of transfer. You won't be able to avoid fees.

The only way to do it is to get a check from a bank in Euro, but you will have to pay a fee of at least $25.

You might ask if they will accept a personal check, in a larger amount than the cost of the first night in EU, and hold it till your arrival. If you don't show up, they can cash your check and have enough to pay any conversion fees on their end.
If you do show up, they can give you back your check and you can pay in cash.

I recently did that with a B&B in Lecce and it worked out fine.

P.S. Your check should of course be in dollars, or whatever your currency is, at the present conversion rate, with a little more for bank conversion fees.

I send money to Europe regularly for purchase.

You have several options. I would not just write a cheque in $, for several reasons: one is that it may be hard for them to cash it, two you don't know what fees there could be to them to cash it, and three, smaller issue, currency exchange.

You have Western Union and Paypal as two options. I found WU to be expensive.

Below are ones I've used.

You can also wire money directly to their bank account using their BIC/SWIFT #s that they would also provide. Still fairly expensive ($40-$50 wouldbe ~ fee). For this, need to make sure that you tell bank you want to pay all fees. There is an option where the cashee pays the bank fees at his end.

Or, buy some euros and send by registered mail.

Simplest...a bank draft in Euros, drawn on a bank in Italy. This is the equivalent of a certified cheque. My cost is ~$6 at my bank. The cheuqe is in Euros, and the bank it is drwan on is the local bank in Italy that your bank does business with. For example, in france my bank uses Societe Generale
I've sent many of these and only once, in a very small town, did the reciever's bank not know what to do with it.
Then you mail it registered mail. If anything ever happens, you can get your money back under certain circumstances. For example, I had one person that I canceled my pruchase. He threw the cheqee out. I have the bank get me a refund since it wa not cashed.

Cheapest and easiest.

Please excuse poor spell checking above

Thank You for the replies. Certainly I'm looking for the cheapest and easiest way to do this. And yes, they specifically asked for a check made out to the Dominican Sisters. I did call my Credit Union and they suggested an International Postal Money Order that I would get through the Post Office. Anyone ever try this? I do have another bank that we do business with and I will call them to inquire about a bank draft made out in Euros.

FYI - Western Union will charge about $15 plus give you a lousy exchange rate (about 10% above the interbank rate). I haven't priced the Post Office. Let us know what their fees are and exchange rate.

I've found convents not to be very flexible in their payment requests. When they require a deposit (usually the first night) you end up paying about double what the room costs. There are a few convents that don't request deposits, but am not aware of any in Rome.

I checked the Postal Web site and Italy is not on the list of countries that accept International Postal Money Orders so I guess that will not work. You hit on my concern, by time I pay all of the fees to reserve the place the price is much higher than we planned. I e-mailed them back to ask for altenatives to sending a check. I'll see what they have to say.

The best way is to go to your local bank and have a bank draft made in € payable to the convent. There will be bank fees both for the service and the currency conversion rate; you may have to wait a few days to get the draft. Then send it registered mail which adds even more cost. I bank with Wells Fargo, they have online forms and instructions making that part of the process easier, your bank may have similar services. I would not use any form of payment that is more like a money order or traveler check that does not specifically put the convent as the payee.

I am in the process of doing this right now for a hotel reservation for Munich during Oktoberfest. All of this increases the cost which cannot be avoided if the hotel won't take a credit card. When you send the payment by mail I would request they reply by e-mail that they have received your payment and your reservation is secured.

You go to a bank and get an international bank draft made out in euros. It will cost you about $5.00. Easy. Then you mail it. As the recipient may have to pay to deposit it (yes, it's true, European banks make you pay to deposit), you might want to add another 20 euros or so, or be prepared to pay that at some later date.

My convent booking experience ( for Istituto S. Giuseppe in Venice) is that they ask for a Euro Traveler's cheque. The first time I did this I sent an unsigned one-- the held the room anyway. Second time I sent a signed one, as they requested. No problem, low fees ( none in my case as my credit card provided them for free).

Is that what the Rome convent is looking for? Check with them to see if they will accept one.

Cheers,
Prosecco

prosecco - To get a Euro Traveler's cheque, you may have hidden fees such as a lousy exchange rate. They make money off these one way or another even if your bank doesn't charge you for them.

My Wells Fargo branch did this for me when I was going to go to Croatia last year.

My Dubrovnik apartment wanted a check in euros. My Wells Fargo person got on the phone with the WF international banking department, and she printed a check (in euros) on a French bank check at my branch while I waited. I sent it off. It was received. Life was good.

Wells Fargo charged me $15 for this, but their effort was well worth it.

Bank draft: cheap, at bank exchange rate, made out to payee, like a certified cheque.

A somewhat related point to be made: there are two components to every foreign currency transaction: the exchange rate AND service fees. Just because the service fees are low or 0$ does NOT mean you are getting a better deal than somewhere that charges you $XX to convert/send currency. Without knowing both you CANNOT know which is better.

One of the tricks exchange bureaus all over use is the large advertising that say "no fee" currency conversion.

Well, I will go on the Fodor's record and say I will willingly take any,ANY, amount of currency anyone here has and charge no fee to convert into any other currency...yes, I am a true charity organization...just please don't check what exchange rate I use

>>>>Wells Fargo charged me $15 for this, but their effort was well worth it.<<<

Yes, I stated earlier in the thread about the $15 Wells Fargo fee. Did you look at the exchange rate they gave you? It's about a 10% markup so they make money two ways on your transaction.

1. Open a checking account that has an ATM or debit card with it.

2. Deposit your rent $ plus enough for the currency markup.

3. Mail the ATM/debit card to the landlord.

4. Emal the PIN.

5. Landlord withdraws &euro; bills from an ATM.

You could go to your local AAA agency and pick up some euros and mail them. Crummy exchange rate, but you are only looking at a small amount. You would have the potential loss in the mail, but it could be offset with all of the other fees, almost.

I send money over about once a year. If you do it bank-to-bank (as I do) you need their BIC and IBAN numbers. It costs me $35 on my end and about $10 on their end. I will certainly look into the alternative procedures recommended by others on this post for the next time I do this.