[cafegirl]

Hi all,

I live in Europe and get checks through Cafepress. Now this is very inconvenient as European bank employees will basically laugh and point at you when you walk into a bank with a check as everything is done electronically and most people internetbank.

Here's what I have to do:
- I have to send the check to my bank,
they then send it physically to the bank in the US to be verified (remember it just came from the US),
- who then hopefully ok it,
- and about 8 weeks later I get my money,
- minus 12 euros (5% of my earnings as I get checks at $250, the max setting at CP) as bank processing fees.

So far the CP checks have cleared. But what if I wanted to sell through someone else.

Are there other ways of dealing with this? Is it for instance possible to get a US bank account from Europe? How do you deal with it?

CafeGirl

 

[Rodney]

I know Adam from buy-tees.net is in the UK and gets checks regularly from CafePress, let me see if he has any suggestions.

 

[pyro]

i am in europe as well.. i hold a few accounts in the states where people can make a deposit or transfer and i can use my atm card here to take out the money.

 

[Adam]

Hi there Cafe Girl,

I'm from the UK and have never experienced anything like that. When I cash a cheque here it takes days to clear in my business account. They send it off to be negotiated most times it appears in my account the day after. If it doesn't go through they can take it back.

They will charge you around £10 for taking it off your hands but until CafePress offer a direct deposit I have to accept that.

What country are you in? What banks to they have to offer there? Shop around and research what banks offer the best conversion service. 8 weeks is just crazy! Make sure the bank are doing a negotiation. I think there is another term used called "collection" that can take weeks. That could well be what your bank have done.

I'm with Barclays btw.. I've also heard Lloyds isn't that bad either - 3-4 days with them.

 

[cafegirl]

Thanx, Adam.

I checked but all the other banks offer a similar "service".

Pyro, how did you open an American account in Europe? Is there one particular US bank you can recommend?

CG

 

[monkeylantern]

Barclays seems to take about a week to two to cash foreign cheques on my Personal account. Pretty good as they send them physically (and some US cheques are awful! Why does the US have such random areas (cheques, banking, currency printing, airports) that it lags 30 years behind the rest of the West, when it's so good elsewhere....I don't understand....)

 

[pyro]

Citibank has quite a few international offices.