Buying Overseas

I buy things from overseas from different countries. It's not frequent at all and never anything expensive, but every once in a while, I need or want something I either can't get in the U.S. or can get more cheaply elsewhere. Now that I'm reading French books, I need to buy books from Europe. Sometimes the price is better in the U.S. Sometimes not. The difference makes it worth it to buy certain titles from Europe.

It turns out my debit card won't work for that, because my bank has a restriction on it. I've ordered books only to have my card declined. I talked to the bank, and they told me they could lift the restriction for a 24-hour period, if I called them before I wanted to buy something. I usually don't know I'm going to buy something until I see if there's anything to buy. Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago I called them. They said I was set.

I found four books on Abebooks.com and ordered them. Even after getting the bank to lift the restriction on my card, it was automatically, instantly declined. I called the bank the next day. They claimed it wasn't their fault. There was nothing they could do. Hmm. A while back I changed banks. I never had this problem at the old bank.

I've spent hours and hours trying to find a way to buy things from Europe. The books I want are usually sold in France, Germany and the U.K. The savings makes the hassle of looking at pre-paid card after card and all the fine print worth it. It's absolutely necessary to look at the fine print, because that's where the hidden fees and charges are. Also, some cards can only be bought in certain countries. I found a great card in the U.K., but I can't drive to their office for it. However, this week I was able to order a couple of books from France, and it worked. This is how I did it.

There's a pre-paid card vendor called MOVO. There's no monthly fee as long as you buy things or transfer money in or out. No problem. At worst that's a 99-cent book on Amazon, or I can transfer funds from my bank and use MOVO instead for some things. I signed up for a card. That was half the battle. The challenge was getting money on it. Doing it at a store costs money that I'm trying to save. After a ton of searching online, I was finally able to use Google Pay to transfer $50. . .to myself. It was free. The trick was I had to have two different Google accounts and two different email addresses. The other trick was that it took two days to authorize the accounts for the transfer as well as authorizing an account on MOVO plus waiting for the money to be credited.

So. I log into Google Pay and choose the send money option. I picked the payment source and the amount. I put in an email address and hit send. I check that email account, accept the money and choose the account for the deposit.

The entire process of getting everything authorized and then waiting for the money to transfer was a complete hassle. But now that it's done, everything is set up for me to transfer money to myself that I can spend almost anywhere in the world without some ridiculous restriction.

The sad news was that by the time I got it all set up two of the four books were no longer available. I was able to order them, but the transaction was never completed. I had to cancel. One of them was a dollar less at another French book store. I ordered that. It was all good. I got three out of the four.

I should mention the currency conversion fee. MOVO charges 3 percent to exchange dollars to Euros or whichever currency. The books I'm buying are between $4 and $6. We're talking about 12 to 18 cents per book. I'm saving well more than that buying them from Europe. So, it's not a problem for my purposes, especially without a monthly fee for the card.

Have a great weekend.