French Banks Don't Change Money!
 

I was surprised to learn on my recent visit to relatives in France that, according to them, most French banks no longer change money.

@-) I didn't know that!

With the euro and the spread of ATMs, it could well be becoming uneconomic to stock relatively small sums of foreign currency and to give the necessary training to counter staff in every local branch.

In the UK, the Post Office is making a major bid to build up an over-the-counter foreign exchange business. Can't say I've checked the bank branches, because I never use them: internet/phone account and ATMs wherever I go.

PatrickLondon's post is the most logical reason -- But are you sure they were talking about foriegn exchange? Just a thought, they might have meant banks no longer exchange frans for euro.

francs, francs, francs . . . .

No - my relatives live in Orleans, a large city and one was coming to the States and needed to change euros to greenbacks and she found that no banks in Orleans did foreign exchange, even the Banque de France, which at one time always offered the best rates, and that the post office was now the only place to convert dollars to euros or v.v.
Myself i don't know - just reporting on what they say - the point is that if you have travelers cheques you'll have to go to the post office and wait in long lines or suffer dismal exchange rates at exchanges at train stations or places like Chequepoint or Travelex - exchange services in tourist areas that often give poor rates even though they deceptively advertise great rates on their signs with fees in small print or advertising buying rates as selling rates. Thank god for ATMs!

The Crédit Agricole in Le Bugue does a brisk business in changing money. At least it did last August. I'll check when I go again in March, but I'm not sure this should be taken as a blanket statement - though I agree that banks are probably finding it less and less essential to provide this service.

OH - PalQ. That makes perfect sense to me. I think we assumed you meant changing foreign currency into euro. But you relative is changing euro to US$. The same thing happens in the States - most banks will not provide foreign currency. And others can only do it as a special order.

This does not surprise me. As long ago as June, 2003 I was trying to cash euro denominated travelers checks in Paris and was turned down by 3 banks who said they did not do "change," even though I pointed out that the checks were in euros. I wound up at a bureau de change where I got 245 euros for 250 euros' worth of T. C.'s. Not too bad.

We found this the hard way several years ago, our first trip back to France in 20 years...came with travelers' cheques. Oh Boy!

When we went to the bank they said the Post Office. Next time, different town, we'd go to the Post Office and they said to go to the bank! More often than not it turned out to be the Post Office, but even they wouldn't exchange large quantities saying they were to exchange for "emergency funds" only.

We couldn't believe one time in La Rochelle when we couldln't even get a bank to change a larger bill (euros) for smaller ones. "Had to have an account at the bank". And we felt really weird going into all these heavily secured buildings with double locked entry systems. They said it was because of robberies...we began to really wonder if there was hard cash to be had in these banks anyway!

This was also true on our trip to the UK in 2004. Unless you were a bank customer(!) they would not exchange dollars for pounds at any of the banks we tried. We just gave up and used our ATM card which worked great and I deposited the $$'s back into our account when we got home.

This doesn't surprise me at all, I wouldn't expect banks to run a bureau de change in each office. I think they have other things they want to spend their time on, not providing change to tourists. There are private companies who specialize in this and do it, and they can make more money because they don't need the type of staffing and capital that regular banks need, do they can make a profit.

It always surprises me how many people think banks should want to do that for people off the street.

Now as for a bank not even being able to provide dollars to a current bank account customer, I am surprised at that. Perhaps it's because it was Orleans, a smaller city. I would have thought they could get it for a fee as a service, though. There are so many places to exchange euros to dollars in France, I can see the banks wouldn't exactly think that a crucial service to provide, though.

I've always gotten currency exchange through the local American Express office. Depending on the currency, sometimes they had to order it. Do you have an American Express card? Is there an American Express office in Orleans?

How much longer before actual cash ceases to exist, apart from its souvenir value?

Hi P,

They are just catching up to the USA, where it's most banks don't deal in foreign exchange. :)

((I))

ira

Including Canadian Dollars!

3 years ago we had to order them in advance from our bank - our son was going on a school trip, so had no ATM card.

It came as a suprise to some of the other parents that their children wouldn't be able to use US$ in Canada :-(

We just got back from our trip to Europe. Have been over a 4-5 times but the last two times we didn't get any traveler's checks and just used our ATM. Banks just didn't want to exchange our Traveler's Checks. We had no problem as there are ATM's everywhere in Europe now with a decent exchange rate.

I haven't been inside a European bank (or currency exchange) since 1998. Even back then, I remember tellers encouraging me to just use the ATM outside.

Many Canadian stores and restaurants take US dollars, but at terrible exchange rates. If in doubt, just offer a one-to-one exchange. Very few places won't take you up on it :).