How to make apartment deposit in Switzerland from private individual?(without credit card)
 

I'm hoping that someone can offer a suggestion as I am in the process of renting an apartment for 1 week from a private individual. Obviously, he doesn't take credit cards....if I mail him a personal check from the USA will he be able to cash it? Can I get a bank check here converted to Swiss Francs? This is difficult as this individual speaks very little English, has no email etc....I'm not sure how to handle this deposit to hold the apartment until June 2002. Thanks. Tom

Here are some options: <BR> <BR>1. get the owner to give you a quote in Euros or Swiss francs and send him the equivalent in Euro travelers checks or Swiss francs travelers checks; <BR> <BR>2. send an international money order in the currency the owner wants; or <BR> <BR>3. wire transfer the money (it will be converted from US $). <BR> <BR>Check with your bank for the best options. <BR> <BR>Leslie

Euros will be a foreign currency as well, since Switzerland is not part of the eurozone. <BR> <BR>Go to your post office and buy an international money order ... most likely your least expensive option, and most of us have a PO conveniently nearby.

We live in Europe and occasionally need funds from our U.S. accounts. The easiest thing overall, in our experience, has been a wire transfer. It's not that expensive. <BR>Our Belgian bank does not like to accept checks from our U.S. bank. According to them, the U.S. bank has up to 2 years to pull the money back from the European bank account. Processing time is very long as well...banks have up to three weeks to process a check and believe me, they'll take every day (even though the money is usually taken out of your account the day after you hand over the check--the banks just take their time posting it to the recipient's account; we got burned once when we wrote a $3000 check from our U.S. account to cover some unexpected expenses. The money was debited from our U.S. account within 48 hours, but took 24 days to appear in our Belgian account. Grrr.). <BR>BTilke (Brussels)

If you're near a big city that has a money exchange company like Thomas Cooks, they will write a check for you in other currency (with a fee of course). I did that instead of getting a bank draft, maybe it seemed easier or clearer to me as I was paying a large school and I was afraid funds would get lost somewhere in the system. They can do that because they have accounts in foreign banks in Europe, which is what you need to write a check in france or whatever. I wasn't aware of the postal international money order, that sounds good. Also, travelers checks in francs sound easy enough for a deposit, I was paying a lot more money for tuition and couldn't do that.