US to Canadian Funds Transfer

[Kingbiscuit]

My wife and I are gearing up to order an Escape 19. Forgive my ignorance, but what is the best way to transfer funds for your purchase and insure that you get the correct exchange rate?

Thanks,

Dan

[Donna D.]

Originally Posted by Kingbiscuit

My wife and I are gearing up to order an Escape 19. Forgive my ignorance, but what is the best way to transfer funds for your purchase and insure that you get the correct exchange rate?

Thanks,

Dan

The "correct" exchange rate happens with ETI receives the funds. Not when you send the money.

[Ironhorsenva]

I'm my case, I made two payments for the purchase, the deposit and final payment. Made the deposit using my credit card. I gave escape the number and they processed it. The $2,500 CAD deposit came out to around $1,875 on my CC statement. That was around this time last year.

Made the final payment though my bank where I had the money saved for the purchase. I sat down with one of the bank reps, she filled out all the forms and Escape confirmed that they had their money about two days later. Escape folks gave me the correct wire transfer info and everything went through smooth.

By the way, these folks have all been really great to work with. Prompt, courteous, professional. My Escape 19 should be leaving their facility next Wednesday headed for my location on the east coast.

[Fox hunt]

I did a wire transfer from my bank did it over the phone was easy my bank did not charge me. Did my deposit with my credit card.

[stephen99]

As Donna said, the rate you get is determined by when ETI gets the check. You can find the current rate at vancity.com. Click on Rates in the menu bar and scroll to the bottom of the page under Foreign Exchange. The rate you get is the Member Sells rate since you are selling USD and buying CAD.

[ThomasG]

Even if your bank doesn't charge a fee for the currency exchange, they do make (a lot of) money on the exchange rate. I found my bank or investment service was making over $1000 on the wire transfer for my final payment to ETI. I ended up using XE.com to make the payment. They gave me a much better exchange rate that cost me about 1/3rd of a bank. XE.com with take the USD out of your bank account, convert it to CAD, then mail ETI a CAD check.

Don't wait until the last minute to setup an XE.com account. Do it several weeks in advance of making your payment. They do a bunch of verification that takes time (I assume to make sure you aren't laundrying money). There are descritpions in this foum for how to setup the XE.com account. It isn't trivial, but it was worth the effort for me.

[ReagentGrade]

UBS set me up with a commodities account and I deposited USD into that account. When I was ready to buy CAD, I called my UBS person. She called one of their commodities traders and he gave her an estimated CAD purchase price, which I approved. I ended up getting a slightly better exchange rate than that quoted on XE.com. If I had bought through XE I would have paid even more than their spot rate. Once the CAD was in my account, I had UBS wire the funds to ETI. The wire cost $40.

I'm very happy with how this went down, but sad that I didn't buy six weeks earlier. Oh well!

[StanLewis]

http://www.escapeforum.org/forums/f3...rate-7492.html

Look at this thread. Lots of discussion about various options for paying ETI and for hedging the exchange rate if you wish to do that. By far the best method I found was working through my broker; YMMV.

[Fox hunt]

My bank sent 10k to Escape that's was what I told them to send Escape received 10 k us and converted it to CA funds . I would have noticed if I lost a 1000 dollars in the exchange it worked well for me I have a good relationship with my bank. There are many ways to do it this one was the easiest for me. I watched the exchange rate carefully and completed my payment early as the rate was climbing. It's a guessing game as to when the rate changes but I think I got a good deal.

[jcundy]

BSEU quoted me exactly the same as ex.com, (.8108) no fee and $35 wire transfer. 3-5 days for over 10k. I was already a member, but I think $50 in an account gets you in.

[phalaney]

Originally Posted by Kingbiscuit

My wife and I are gearing up to order an Escape 19. Forgive my ignorance, but what is the best way to transfer funds for your purchase and insure that you get the correct exchange rate?

Thanks,

Dan

We have ours on order, when we placed the order the Exchange rate was at 74 now at 81. When it reached 77 we had our broker buy us a FXC CURRENCYSHARES CAN - ETF for the total cost of the trailer. Currently we are making money on this and will cash it in and send off the funds in November. Only wish we had done this when the rate was at 74! Of course we take the risk that the exchange rate drops below what we purchased it for but the current trend does not look like that will be happening.