Sending Money Out Of The Country With Western Union

[toongeorges]

For the Easter holidays, I am going for a couple of days with my girlfriend to a desolated place in Uruguay. To make the booking, we had to transfer some money with Western Union. It seems that it is impossible to send money out of the country with Western Union, except if you send the money with Correo Argentino. For 60 USD, I officially sent 348 peso. At an official rate of 5,120 peso for a dollar, 60 USD would be equal to 307,2 peso, so Correo Argentino takes a service fee of 40,8 peso or 13,28%, which seems normal. However, the real amount I had to pay was 515,17 peso! Is changing the amount you paid a new trick to "control" the inflation?

 

[recapitulation]

Is it possible to use rapi pago? I haven't tried, but that might work better?

 

[toongeorges]

I think the situation makes no sense. The 167,17 peso extra I had to pay were "taxes". This gets me an unofficial exchange rate of (307,2 + 167,17)/60 = 7,91, which is still lower than the blue rate of 8,420/8,480 peso for a dollar. Even with the "taxes", the Argentinian state is subsidising currency exchange. If the service cost is taken into account, the exchange rate is 8,586 peso for a dollar, thus only a spread of 0,106 peso per dollar over the exchange rate of 8,480. It may thus be cheaper to send money out of the country than to exchange at an exchange house, where spreads may be bigger than 0,30 peso per dollar!

 

[Rich One]

Question is ? how much $$ can you send per month via WU ?

 

[French jurist]

Has anyone investigated more about the possibility sending money abroad (to Europe)?

With correo argentino, does the recipient have to be a relative/parent?

 

[Montauk_Project]

The work around I do is to have money in paypal and use that to pay anything overseas (skype, website hosting, the occasional service). It is impossible to link it to an Argentine bank account, so you will never be able to cash out here.
I´m surprised you were able to use WU at all, thought it was shut down.

 

[PaulBee]

You might try using Exchange4Free or Xoom (but Xoom requires senders to have bank
accounts in USA).

 

[esllou]

The work around I do is to have money in paypal and use that to pay anything overseas (skype, website hosting, the occasional service). It is impossible to link it to an Argentine bank account, so you will never be able to cash out here.
I´m surprised you were able to use WU at all, thought it was shut down.

how do you fund the PP account? From a CC?

 

[D.B. Cooper]

You go to the Request Money tab in PP and create an invoice to have somebody send you money.
The person who is sending you $$$ has to have a PP account. Or have somebody in the USA
add $ to your PP accnt using the MoneyPak option. You can buy them at Walmart, 7eleven, Kmart nationwide.
Only in the USA.

 

[esllou]

if there's someone here with PP who wants to send money OUT to someone's PP, how would they put money into the PP account?