TRAVELLERS' CHEQUES
SIR,—Cannot something be done about the racket which foreign banks, bureaux de change and hotels are apparently free to operate in the matter of exchange rates? During the past year I have been in France, Italy, Spain; in each country, different banks offered different rates, always well below the rate of exchange given here and the so-called 'official' rate, so that on travellers' cheques it was possible to lose up to even three shillings on the pound. In Paris, last week, for example, my hotel coolly offered 1,320 francs to the £, as against 1360 in a bank, or 1375, which I got in London. I read advertisements for travellers' cheques, as a form of money that can't be lost, but in face of the legalised losses inflicted by foreign banks, etc., travellers must be increasingly tempted to take all their money in cash and risk loss by other forms of robbery.
And if nothing can be done to prevent the racket, cannot home banks at least give clients some up-to- the-minute warning of the fluctuations in rates they may expect if taking travellers' cheques? English banks seem oddly unaware of such fluctuations—or they are at my bank. Barclay's, 56 Great Portland Street, W I.
London PETER PORSTER
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