Sunday, October 21, 2007

Payment Difficulties


We got our Australian credit cards (credit limit $A3,000) and immediately put $A1,550 of the outstanding balance for the car onto it. We need the card to buy car insurance etc. so we can't max it out. I then attempted to put the remaining $A7,000 on two of Snork Maiden's US visa cards. They didn't work. Neither did my HSBC credit card. In other words, none of our US credit and debit cards apart from my Citibank Credit Card (which I made the initial $A200 deposit with) worked in this dealer's machines. There's nowhere near enough available credit on that one card though to complete the deal. So plan B is for Snork Maiden to go to the bank on Monday and attempt to get a cash advance on her HSBC debit card. If that doesn't work, Plan C is for me to do a wire transfer from one of my US brokerage accounts (free transfer but borrowing on a margin loan) to our bank here and then go to the branch of our bank in the dealer's neighbourhood and take out the remaining $A7,000 in cash and take it round the corner to them and get the car. I'll then set up an ACH transaction on my brokerage account to repay the loan from Snork Maiden's HSBC account. The wire transfer might take a little time to actually show up in our account here, which is why we are trying the cash advance first. However, the wire transfer approach is cheaper as it avoids the transaction fees on using credit or debit cards overseas. HSBC's debit card fee is though only 1% until November 5th when it rises to 3%.

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