Don't even get me started on this stuff....
I have an American Client that I do Paid Blogging for, and it took me ages to get them to start doing things via Wire Transfer.
Their Justification? It costs $12 to cover the wire charges, but only 10c to put a pre printed cashiers cheque in an envelope and air mail it to me.
No to be honest, I wouldn't mind the Cheque, except for one problem.
My Business Bank account insists that when I hand the cheque to them, they have to send it all the way back to the states, to be verified by the originating bank, who will then send it back to them, and which they then have to hold in escrow for a week upon it's return because of EU anti money laundering laws, and yep... you guessed it, ALL OF THIS COSTS MONEY, money that I have to pay, from the Cheque that Iv'e received.
There's a handling charge by my Bank, Air Mail costs, A Handling charge by the issuing bank, A handling charge for the return, then a handling charge while it sits in Escrow. Beacuse it's a business bank account, I know for a fact that it's used as liquid assets by my bank while in Escrow, so there more than likely getting a chunk of interest on it too.
And ME? I'm lucky if I end up with about 40% of the original, because everything has to be done in percentages right, I mean we'd hate that a larger cheque cost more to to process than a small value cheque, I mean the extra weight in the paper most be tremendous right?
When I initially tried to explain this all to my client, it just didn't seem to sink in, because they where saving $11.90c on the transaction, as opposed to the 60% or so I was loosing on the over all value of the payment.
Crooks the bloody lot of them, there's a really good reason we call them Bankers!!!