Has anyone had any experience with the foreign currency exchange offered through the credit union? Basically they redirect you to ezforex.com and you give that company access to your bank account to take the money and they deliver the foreign currency to you. I know it's a direct link to the site from aggieland, but I still feel funny giving a third party my bank login.

Anyone have anything good or bad?

Thanks.

We did that with no issues last summer. Dump all of your coins before you come back. They only take back paper.

We used Prosperity for ours in April. We needed two different currencies. They used Travelex. Prosperity pulled the money from my account. I did not provide access to the exchange company. They charged me a flat $27 fee and gave me the exchange rate of that day on both currencies. I picked it up at Prosperity the next day.

The advice that I received (and seemed to prove true) was that the closer you get to your destination, (our airport, then their airport, then exchange offerings in-country) the worse your exchange rate will be. If depending on ATM machines, I would still obtain a very adequate amount of the destination currency in advance. Additionally, we found our AMEX cards to be very fair in conversion when we paid with them - which we did, quite a bit.

Amex is very good for foreign travel. Check with your other cards, some tack on considerable fees for use out of country.

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-foreign-travel-vacation-tips-5623.php

Ive used Wells Fargos online service. Debit from account and it shows up in the mail.

Everybody says to just find an ATM on arrival but I'm a be prepared guy and that's one less thing to hunt down in a foreign country.

I also try to use cash when traveling. Always feel like every time you swipe a card in a tourist town it increases the chance of your account/ card getting munked up at a time when it would be the most inconvenient.

I never had a problem (with USAA) getting money from an ATM. Or just charging.

My wife had problems getting aggieland CU to transfer money to her UK account. She ended up sending it to our USAA joint then to her UK.

Check what fees aggieland cu charges. USAA was a flat 3% for ATM money which is about what any broker will charge. (Or less).

Thanks for all of the replies - as to why the credit union - that's where we bank, and I've always heard it's more expensive to exchange at the airport. It's been over 20 years since I was last out of the country so I have no idea what I did back then.

I don't know what the credit union/its exchange partner charges other than shipping as you have to log into the new site with your ACU credentials to get to that part and I don't want to do that.

I checked BofA and they also do a "mail order" exchange, but at least there you log into BofA site before transferring to alternate site. Moot subject anyway as I don't have an account there.

Using an AmEx is not an issue for the bigger stuff, but I wanted some pocket change to have for a cup of coffee or postcard or something rather than using a card for a 2.00 purchase.

I will check with Aggieland re their atm fees -

Thanks.

Vote here for just getting money out of an ATM when you arrive.

Agree with others on using the ATM. You can get a small amount of "just in case" currency if that makes you comfortable, but ATMs usually offer better exchange rates than banks and always better than airport money changers. The only issue I have ever encountered is finding a foreign ATM that uses a common ATM network with Wells Fargo, but I have always found one in short order (in dozens of countries).

Too bad you didn't post 2 weeks ago. My daughter in law just came back from Vicenza for a 2 month visit. She could have brought you some cash.

I should have asked earlier, where are you going? The only time I've personally had cash before entering a country was Vietnam, where you need to pay for the visa when you get there. But that's just how I travel, it's not for everybody.