Could be worse, if it was an American bank, they would process the check, charge you the fee, not tell you about the fee (you’d find out when you looked at the statement if you looked) and if your account did not have sufficient funds to cover the fee, they would just let you have a negative balance and charge you daily interest on it as well as regular fees for having a negative balance and so on and so on until one day a collections agency sends you a threatening letter trying to collect the $10000 you owe because the bank wrote off the debt. Granted, this is a worse case scenario, but if Bank of America was trying to cash a check drawn on a foreign bank, you would not get a polite letter declining to cash it.
I had a similar problem some time ago, so I opened a US$ account with Citibank UK. Along with a UK Sterling account with the same bank, I can transfer between the accounts at the prevailing ‘buy’ rates that the bank offers without any extra charges. Might be worth looking into that if this is going to be a regular thing. Actually, in my case I’ve also opened a NZ$ account as I’m getting regular payments from New Zealand too! If you can’t be bothered with the hassle, I can cash the cheque on your behalf if you want and transfer it to you. Although, this means trusting someone you’ve never met! :) i’ve tried to go to their site http:///www.citibank.co.uk to check their exchange rate for transfer to Uk Sterling, but the bloody site is down! Anyway, drop me an email if you want any help with it.
People still use cheques?? I would have thought they’d credit it directly to an account (using a SWIFT code or whatever the international thing is)
Amazing ! how much is $64 these days, thirty GBP british roughly? And its still not enough to cover the process charge ? Not surprising banks are in a mess !