Revolut any good? to pay broker in Euros for a boat

blampied

blampied

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Thinking of buying a boat in France, would need to pay in Euros.
as I already have a Revolut card (I have never paid for anything more expensive than a hotel room on it), their Euro exchange rates don’t look too bad, (especially compared to my bank) would this be a suitable way to pay a broker for an expensive second hand boat.
 
I use Revolut for euro payment of marina and service fees in Spain and the rates are the best I’ve found. Just be beware not to use them at weekends because they up their rate to protect themselves for presumably less weekend rate monitoring.
For such a huge sum just check they are covered by the UK financial authority (whatever it’s called)
I have recently been checking out starling bank who are covered. Not wishing to highjack your post but I’m interested in any view of Starling (maybe useful for you too)
 
I used them to buy and transfer euros to buy a boat recently, it was fine, the best rate I could find.

Be aware though that any money in a revolut account is not covered by the fscs compensation scheme - so if revolut happen to go bust while your money is in the account you could lose the lot.
 
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That’s looking promising, can’t say I’d thought about the FSCA.
Maybe the broker would be happy with 4 or 5 payments staggered over a week to reduce the maximum amount that could be lost.
 
I moved to Ireland and opened up a Revevut account to accept my various UK Pension payments into, worked fine and much better fx rates than I was previously getting.

However, we then decided to move back to UK and sold our property in Ireland, our Irish solicitors deposited the winnings into our Revolut account as instructed, Revolut promptly froze the funds. Despite us providing the valid responses to the computer generated requests for evidence of the source of the funds, our funds remained frozen for 8 weeks which caused immeasurable stress as we needed the funds to complete the purchase of the house we were buying in the UK. It really was a nightmare and there appeared to be no humans available within the Revolut organisation to sort the transaction out. I finally had the funds released after opening up a Facebook account (something I had sworn I’d never do) looking for help there - and even that dialogue was along the lines of “I’m reaching out to my colleagues for help, have a great day” blah blah blah. So on that experience I wouldn’t touch Revolut again with a large amount of my money, as said earlier, absolute nightmare!
 
Wandering Star said:
I moved to Ireland and opened up a Revevut account to accept my various UK Pension payments into, worked fine and much better fx rates than I was previously getting.

However, we then decided to move back to UK and sold our property in Ireland, our Irish solicitors deposited the winnings into our Revolut account as instructed which promptly froze the funds. Despite us providing the valid responses to the computer generated requests for evidence of the source of the funds, our funds remained frozen for 6 weeks which caused immeasurable stress as we needed the funds to complete your n the house we were purchasing in the UK. It really was a nightmare and there appeared to be were no humans available to sort the transaction out. I finally had the funds released after opening up a Facebook account (something I had sworn I’d never do) looking for help there - and even that dialogue was along the lines of “I’m reaching out to my colleagues for help, have a great day” blah blah blah. So on that experience I wouldn’t touch Revolut again with a large amount of my money, as said earlier, absolute nightmare!
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I did have a payment limit issue once but they had live chat available then and I got the limit raised same day. I hope they haven't canned the live chat now.....
 
dune16 said:
I did have a payment limit issue once but they had live chat available then and I got the limit raised same day. I hope they haven't canned the live chat now.....
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It was nothing to do with payment limits and the Live Chat was simply an opportunity to seek help which would then be ignored. In fairness, but not imo justifiably so, this was the beginning of COVID and it’s fallout. But it was a lot of money and left me desperately worried as I could get nowhere!
 
When I bought a boat from France last year, I got a better deal using Transferwise (now called Wise) than Revolut were offering at the time. Easy to use and very quick.
 
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I have used Fairfx effing spell checkercards for years personally and also for small personal transfers for buying wine with a group so £5k to euros.
Business wise we use Fairfx for purchasing from Euroland and US good rates and great service. The last purchase was a boat hoist and spares.
 
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I did find Wise a lot more intuitive to use for me. I find I have to flog through Revolut. I guess if I did regular payments then I’d get used to it.
Also its easier to find the real rate with Wise. It took me a while of navigation to find Revolut’s rate.
As an aside, has anyone found a non charge cash point bank in Spain for Wise or Revolut cards (or others)?
 
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There are some votes here for Transferwise, a company which I've used several times over the years, always with good results, however.

Currently their service doesn't seem to match previous experiences (whether it's due to the name change, I don't know, but they still seem to be the same company). I've got two transfers with them at the moment, both sent at the start of this week, with a 'your money will arrive tomorrow', and as of yet, still nothing. They have no customer support, just an FAQ page, so I resorted to Facebook to find their page filled with endless 'you've had my money for 8 weeks, and still no update' posts. It doesn't fill me with confidence, and mine has only been three days.
 
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