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I used my Lloyds debit card in France for a single transaction of 420 Euros. Because of the exchange rate loading applied by Lloyds above the international visa rate (as used by the N&P) they charged me £10 plus a £1 overseas transaction fee, a total of £11.00. Of course they advertise no fees for purchase of travel money in the UK and no charge to change it back into sterling. However, because of the loading it amounts to a very substantial charge indeed, both at the start and end of a trip. The girl on the counter at Lloyds said I would be better off going to the money shop up the high street!
On a different note, for all transactions, over two months, either ATM or card purchases the N&P charged me nothing and their exchange rate was the Visa rate, just a little above BOE.
The fee's in their current form are easily avoidable, its bad planning the leads to their occurrence.
Best to use a credit card for all transactions where cards are accepted usually get the best exchange rate on the day and all transactions are insured and no messing about 'topping up' like prepaid cards.
Can't believe the people at the checkout with 100's of euros stuffed in the wallets - not ideal!
Things must be looking up as in addition to the above I see the Euro rate is now up to 1.197 to the £ this morning with several exchange rates even Tescos offering 1.1675 or better.
Being a former accountant, I just had to check what exchange rate we got during two months in France. We used our credit card for all transactions where possible and cash where not via a CaxtonCard, we averaged a rated of 1.1252 over the period. If I take the same transactions and use the Bank of England daily rate this equates to 1.1336 for the same period.
We therefore paid 0.0084 / 1.1252 = 0.75% "commission". My overall spend was about £4750 so I actually paid about £36 in commission, which is not bad at all.
I never had more than 200 in our wallets/purse combined at any time and all of the credit card transactions were covered by the Visa agreement.
This looks like a good way to go. Simple to operate a relatively safe in the event of theft. Apart from two campsites which could not take a credit card, all garages and supermarkets were more than happy to use credit cards. Nearly all visits to chateaux, museum and other attractions took credit cards.
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Germany
