Guys quick question for those who have used citibank plus to take money overseas. I know we don't get charged foreign transaction fee but I just withdrew 1M Viet Dong, citi charged me $63.40, so about 15,700 per $1.
Airport exchange places (those known to have worse rates than the ones in the city) have them as buy 15,900. It seems it's better to exchange localy than using citi card (contrary to my understanding).
What have you guys experienced?
What about 28 degrees cc?
A discussion about use of this card in Vietnam is on tripadvisor
https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/ShowTopic-g293924-i8595-k8386…
Are you sure? The mastercard (https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/consumers/get-support/conver…) and visa (https://www.visaeurope.com/making-payments/exchange-rates) exchange rate websites show much higher rates well above 16,000VND for 1AUD. The thing that happened here is that the ATM provider in Vietnam may have charged a fee
By 'charged me' I assume you mean 'which equated to $63.40 which effectively used an exchange rate of'.
In my experience Citibank uses the MasterCard rate and this is very close to the XE.com rate.
The difference may have been in the ATM fee (as others have mentioned)
That is usually better than what I can get on the street (and less chance of dodgyness).
If you can get better than official rates on the street - buy there.
Simples.
Citibank plus is a Visa card not MasterCard, otherwise the rest is correct
Yep - sorry, I meant Visa rate.
Brain fart on my part.
They are switching from visa to master card
Sorry yup thats what i meant. Was in a rush between getting money, exchanging, being picked up & typing the thread while usinh airport's wifi.
Are you confusing buy and sell rates.
These are different, so the 15900 BUY rate you saw at the airport isnt better than a 15700 SELL rate.
You sell a dollar to the bank they give you VND of 15700
You then want to buy a dollar, and you are charged 15900,
this means if you buy and sell at the same time you lose 200VND.
Now looking at the airport rate you will probably find that the exchange rate for selling to you would be much less than the buy rate 15900
+1 When trying to work out which rate applies to you on the moneychanger's board the rule of thumb is it's the one that disadvantages you more.
Sell was 17k, buy was 15,700.
This means they will buy 1AUD and give you 15700dong. You also have to see what it is they or you are selling or buying, 4 combinations. My rule of thumb takes care of that.
But also it's not surprising for money changers to be competitive with plastic in Thailand and possibly Vietnam. For Thailand I just changed cash.
Yup understood that. My post was asking if other users experiencing better rate from exchange counter or from using the card.
From some of the responses it seems some banks charge 20-50k VND just for using the card, thats why it seems the rate is so bad. Will try again when i see citibank atm.
on a recent trip to thailand, im under the belief that the atm owner charges a fee, which is inbuilt into the fx rate
this is based on:
me taking a small some of money out of an atm
immediately after, my mate takes out decently larger sum of money
his rate was 26.3
mine was 24.6
THB/AUD
Thai ATMs charge like $8.
How did it feel having 1 million dongs in your hand
I am originally from SEA too so millions in other currencies is common for me. Though seeing 500K in a note is intriguing.
I always go to Citibank Bank's ATM's (safer in case ATM keeps my card or ATM scams), Bangkok and HCM. Never charged a fee. Rate always beats the best rate available at money changers. Also regarding exchanging cash, I have always found HCM airport money changers have a better rate than the city. There are lots of them and they are very competitive.
So far:
Gold shop > Banks (many don't even exchange AUD) > Airport > Exchange in Australia.
28 Degrees rate seems to be between gold shop & banks.
Citibank card, I haven't had any luck of using it, the only citi atm I found couldn't take the card, found 2 DongA Bank ATMs (according to the whirpool site, the only other bank that doesn't charge fee - first one was out of order, second had pop up there will be fee.
Could there have been a charge levied by the local bank for using their ATM? Have a look at the Whirlpool guide on using the card in Vietnam. It mentions that: