Has anyone ever tried this $$ transfer?

[PapaAzucar]

I don't have much experience with Taiwan banks,
But will this work for transferring Taiwan NT to your US bank.

1. You convert NT to US in your Taiwan bank.
2. Buy a cashier's check with your US dollars from the Taiwan bank in US currency.
3. Send it in the mail to your US bank for deposit.

The risk of the check being "lost in the mail" can be mitigated by buying insurance and tracking number for your mail.
And if the mail is ever really lost in the mail, you can use your cashier's check receipt to recover the money.

Aside from the bank's exchange rate, cost of the cashier's check, and the mailing to the US, the total costs for this transfer seems minimal as opposed to Paypal.
Would this work or am I missing something here?

[Abacus]

Why not just do a bank transfer?

I did my first transfer a few weeks ago and it looks like it cost $400NT (29.565 exchange rate).

[cfimages]

Just go to Bank of Taiwan. NT$400 for a wire transfer with exchange rates calculated at whatever the posted official rate is at the time. Cheap, easy and can be done in 5 minutes.

[PapaAzucar]

So what is the advantage of the 2-Paypal-account-transfer over the bank wire transfer?
Paypal seems to have a 9-10% exchange rate overhead in addition to their 2-3% fees.
It sounds like bank wire transfer is still the cheapest and better transfer?

[Abacus]

So what is the advantage of the 2-Paypal-account-transfer over the bank wire transfer?
Paypal seems to have a 9-10% exchange rate overhead in addition to their 2-3% fees.
It sounds like bank wire transfer is still the cheapest and better transfer?

I don't know why you would use Paypal. I thought about it before because I thought wire transfers would be expensive but they are actually very cheap while Paypal is expensive.

[tsukinodeynatsu]

Paypal is great for buying things online because you just need to tell them your item never came and you get your money refunded.

Seriously. You can get half of the things on ebay for free.

Sucks for sellers, plenty of people really dislike them now. They've just upped their charges too.

[creztor]

You'll find that a T/T will cost more than 400NT, as the receiving bank also takes a cut. However, it is cheaper than Paypal if you are talking about sums over 1,000 USD or higher. I wouldn't use anything less than T/T for any serious amount.