Cashing a US$ cheques into GBP cash, best options?

[fergs]

Evening all,
Looking for recommendations please, I am in possession of a US$ cheque (in my name) and want to exchange it into GBP with the minimum amount of commission and the best possible fx rate. If i put this through my bank I will cost a fortune and at the worst possible fx rate. Have used auctionchex in the past but this was also expensive. Any cost effective recommendations?

Thanks...

[fergs]

Bump

[fergs]

bump

[davepoth]

What sort of value are you looking at?

Looking around the internet the suggestion is to open a foreign currency bank account, pay the cheque into that, and then use someone like XE.com (that's not a recommendation, it's just the one I know of) to exchange the funds at a good rate. I'm not sure what the charges will be for something like that though.

[fergs]

Thanks, its north of $30k, as you can imagine i am keen to keep the charges down and the rate competitive, ideally in one single transaction....

[The Leaper]

I occasionally receive US$ denominated cheques. Because of this I started a US$ denominated account with my bank in the UK. This means that the incoming cheques can be banked at face value with no exchange rate used or charges applied. I then use this account to wtite US $ cheques for overseas expenses or I buy foreign currency and get charged per transaction. Of course there will be a time when I probably want to close the account and transfer it to my regular UK sterling account and then there will be exchange and charges to be applied.

The bottom line is that I do not think there is any way you're going to avoid the exchange and charges in the long run although you may do so for a while.

R.

[The jiffle king]

I get 1 of these every year and generally go into the bank and they tell me their rate for the prior day which I compare with the general exchange rate. Nationwide is usually not too bad (within 1.5%)
Ideally I would set up a $ account, but have not done yet.

When I have euros to transfer back, I generally use UKforex who do a good deal

[marky1]

Just open a USD account with your current bank. Then lodge the cheque. Then find the cheapest company to do the FX through. If you want to avoid high charges that's the only way.

[Ozzie Osmond]

I believe Hargreaves Lansdown claim to be able to handle this sort of thing. Worth having a chat with them even if the outcome turns out to be negative.

http://www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/currency-s...