I opened an XE account to rent a place in Brittany. They wanted the bank draft in pounds because the agent was located in England. It was very easy to open an account. There was no extra fee for the service, the cost was covered by the exchange rate difference, which I thought was competitive. My bank does allow electronic funds transfers so that helped speed the process. I set up the account in a "few" minutes and they mailed the draft out within a couple of days. It took about a week maybe to get to the owner. Very easy, inexpensive and I got to do something new!

Here is a link for anyone thinking of using a debit card . We've discussed it at length here. OOps, can't get it now, please click on my name and it will be there, somewhat down the list I would think.
We always do this now and it works great and is definitely the cheapest way to send money, with no problems so far.

I do not send the pin with the card, nor put more than $20 in the account before they receive the card. When they receive it and send me an email telling me so, I transfer the money in and give them the pin in the email...which takes about half a minute to do. It's worked like a charm every time I've done it and I think the landlords like it as well because they incur no fees either.

Here is the link:
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...s-overseas.cfm

The other thing I do is not have it be a debit/credit card, only a debit card to that account.

After checking with all the banks in my small city I couldn't find one that would do a draft. Maybe in a bigger city they can do it but I got a lot of weird looks when I asked about them too.

I emailed the owner back to ask about any other options including sending cash. I don't know why he won't do a wire transfer but it's not an option. He is being very kind and letting us pay cash in € on arrival.

My headache is now gone and my mom and the kids are happy because the house has a pool.

<i> I think their costs are $19.95 to send one hundred dollars instantly, which actually land in the users bank account.</i>

Is that 20% <b>!!!</b> fee constant?

Well, that's quite the rip-off. We just wired $3,000 from our credit union for $5.00.

<i>We just wired $3,000 from our credit union for $5.00.</i>

Just curious. How close to the daily quote was your exchange rate?

I think it was 1.25% (but it's the World Bank Group credit union and they get reamed if they don't have the very best rates around). They also have a daily wire transfer limit per customer of $20,000 (!!!), which I believe is far different from most banks (my regular bank won't let me send more than $1,000 in a day).

So you wired euros and not dollars, otherwise you are at the mercy of the French bank which does the conversion.

I'm asking the question because readers should be aware that with transfers there are two costs involved: 1. the charge for the transfer itself; 2. the conversion rate used.

Oh yes, euros - $3,000 worth, and paid $5.00 on top of that for the transfer.