{"id":11,"date":"2016-08-19T17:35:50","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T17:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.k2dls.net\/blog\/?p=11"},"modified":"2016-12-29T14:58:03","modified_gmt":"2016-12-29T14:58:03","slug":"transparency-and-international-funds-transfer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/2016\/08\/19\/transparency-and-international-funds-transfer\/","title":{"rendered":"Transparency and International Funds Transfer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In June I attended the Ham Radio<\/a> 2016 show in Friedricshafen, Germany.\u00a0 I had the opportunity to purchase a nice, compact digital transceiver.\u00a0 The Hytera PD365<\/a> cost surprisingly less than it would in the USA.\u00a0 And, as a bonus, I could get the 19% Value Added Tax<\/a> (VAT) refunded once I brought it home.<\/p>\n

Sort of…<\/p>\n

There are shops around the world that are setup to make the tax refund easy and will rebate it directly to your credit card.\u00a0 Not so with Difona Communications GmbH<\/a>, but they were able to provide a tax refund form at the show.\u00a0 I had to get it stamped by customs upon leaving the European Union and then mail it back to the vendor in Germany.\u00a0 They paid the refund via international wire transfer.<\/p>\n

Here is where the fun began.\u00a0 I received about $14 less than expected and set about trying to find out where the difference went.\u00a0 It was not easy.\u00a0 There is no transparency in such transactions.\u00a0 I had to call my bank more than a handful of times before I could get to someone knowledgeable enough to assist.<\/p>\n

Early calls revealed that the funds came in as US dollars via the Automated Clearing House<\/a> (ACH).\u00a0 The ACH received the funds from Fed Global<\/a>.\u00a0 What is Fed Global?\u00a0 The Federal Reserve Bank.\u00a0 The Fed suffers from a complete lack of transparency and will not speak to the consumer at all.\u00a0 Kudos to those in Congress who want to audit the Fed<\/a>.\u00a0 I’m with you.<\/p>\n

Anyway, after several weeks, numerous calls, and a case filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau<\/a>, I received an answer.<\/p>\n

Fees were deducted from the amount that the vendor paid to me.\u00a0 The vendor — Difona — indicated that this is what should be done at the time of the transfer.\u00a0 Difona did not disclose this to me when I sent them an inquiry asking for documentation on the transaction.\u00a0 Had this been disclosed, it would have saved me and others a lot of time spent on calls and emails to research the discrepancy.<\/p>\n

Caveat emptor!<\/p>\n

\"Hytera
Hytera PD365 compact DMR radio<\/figcaption><\/figure>Still, I purchased a good piece of merchandise at less than 2\/3 of the USA cost.\u00a0 I learned that in the case of a VAT refund, it is better to deal with Global Blue<\/a> particpating merchants.\u00a0 Otherwise, expect to pay an undocumented and substantial fee for a wire transfer and expect no documentation or transparency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In June I attended the Ham Radio 2016 show in Friedricshafen, Germany.\u00a0 I had the opportunity to purchase a nice, compact digital transceiver.\u00a0 The Hytera PD365 cost surprisingly less than it would in the USA.\u00a0 And, as a bonus, I could get the 19% Value Added Tax (VAT) refunded once I brought it home. Sort … Continue reading “Transparency and International Funds Transfer”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-radio","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k2ie.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}