Discussion: Paying to enter European events

It seems that European events generally take payment by fund-transfer and not by credit card, PayPal or any other more modern internet-friendly method. This is hugely expensive for me - entering the WOC Tour in Norway cost me $300Cdn plus $70 transfer fees.

Why is it I can't use a credit card or payPal?

same for france - its a pain

The UK online entry systems all taked Credit Cards. Norway/Sweden/Finland all seem more geared up to people entering as a club and thus a fund transfer makes more sense. At local events in the above geographies where I have taken a group along they have allowed me to pay on the day when I ask nicely (probably less likely for WOC Tour !).

Oringen accepts credit cards but in Finland, Italy and Switzerland we had to do wire transfers and each one cost about $50 and was a pain. I heard though that in Europe wire transfers are free and easy so maybe that's why it's the norm there---plus the orgainizers probably don't want to loose the fee that the credit card company takes.

within Europe bank transfers are free, we don't pay such extremely high (and in my oppinion unreasonable) bank fees. Also these transfers are the easiest way and become even more easy due to modern online-banking. Additionally, (at least in Germany) nobody usually has a credit card except maybe business people. The whole concept of paying by credit is unusual here. But it's getting better and credit cards become more common in the last years

If you have such problems write mails to the event organisers, so that they become aware of the problem! I think many of them are just not familiar with the problem and simply don't know that you have to pay such high fees. Usually I could solve such problems by just asking nicely ;-) (at least in Germany the orienteering community is like a family).

I think that with RBC you can do a fund transfer online for $18, which is better that $70. I also managed to mail money orders ($6) to pay for an Italian event, although I think the organizers charged me a processing fee too. Otherwise, do you have a friend with a European bank account?

Citi is $34, works great. I used a Canadian intermediary called XETrade for many years, they charged $18 to credit the European bank and nothing to debit a U.S./Canadian bank, but I will not recommend them, they started to play with the effective transfer date so as to maximize their currency-exchange profits, and it nearly cost me several hundred dollars (not on O-event entries). But the service is there, use at own risk.

This discussion is all very interesting. I had no idea. I now understand why a family relative that lives in Europe and occasionally works in the US, recently opened a bank account in the US just to deposit US-originated checks (both personal and corporate), because if he were to use his european bank to deposit a US-based bank check, a processing fee of $25 was going to be charged.

I now understand why a family relative that lives in Europe and occasionally works in the US recently opened a bank account in the US

I am surprised they allowed him to do it, the Patriot Act seems to forbid this activity if your friend truthfully answered the question about his permanent address.

I had this trouble a few years ago before traveling to Finland. Not only did it cost ~$40 to make each transfer, my local bank really didn't know how to handle it, and some of the funds didn't go through properly.

In at least one case, I wrote to the organizers to explain my situation, and they were very polite. Let me pay cash when I arrived on site.

I think seelefliege does a good job explaining why Europe doesn't take credit cards. i would also add (based on my conversations with some non o'ing folks) that they want to avoid the fees they must pay to the credit card companies (and to paypal for that matter). Plus there usually aren't enough people from NA to worry about.

I've had the best success using my brokerage company. They charge $25, i think, but waive the fee if you have over a certain amount with them. Still somewhat of a pain since things seem to grind to a halt whenever the world "international" comes up.

here's a link which show's the wide range of fees charged so shop around (but $70 seems high):

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/836746/