Exchange Rates and Opening a HK Account

I brought some cash with me from the US to open an account here with HSBC. Here are the details.

The exchange rate they give you is 7.707 (I exchanged 9k USD). They said this was a favorable rate but I wasn't so sure.

I went down to the street level money changers and the rate they advertise is 7.5 HKD to 1 USD, which is even worse! I asked them if I were to exchange in bulk (1k USD) how much would it be, and even then they said the rate would be 7.6.

The going rate for that day was:

2009-01-30 Friday, January 30 7.75585 HKD

HSBC was charging .04885/7.75585. This works out to be a charge of .63%. This is actually not bad - Everbank charges a rate of 1% for an international ATM withdrawal (which is much better than the industry standard 3%). The only thing better for exchanging money is to use the Capital One card which charges 0% but isn't really a money exchange.

Withdrawing from China ATM = Bad Deal!

On top of a 3% ATM Foreign Fee charge, I got charged a flat $4.50 Non-Citi ATM Fee as well!! Here's the detail breakdown for withdrawing $1000 RMB from a Standard Chartered ATM in Shenzhen:

NONCITIBANK ATM WITHDRAWAL 07:06 3016 $ 146.94
NONCITI ATM FEE $ 4.50
FOREIGN FEE 07:06 3016 $ 4.41

CapitalOne Platinum Visa Rocks!!

Just got charged the following amount for an $80 HKD box of cookies from HK Disneyland:

November 03, 2008 HONG KONG DISNEYLAND LANTAUISLAND Merchandise $10.32

80/10.32 = 7.75

That makes it a no cost transaction!!!! WOW!

Just used my Bank ATM card as Mastercard

Just in case you're curious, I just bought tickets to evening Disneyland for their halloween celebration. Here's the details:

$396 HKD for 2 tickets
$52.61 USD '*DEBIT AUTHORIZATION'

It seems like a 3% fee is being charged:

$396 * 1.03= 407.88
407.88 / 7.75 = 52.63

I couldn't use my Capital One Visa as Visa is forcing people to use a PIN on international websites and I haven't received my PIN yet.

Foreign Fees Revisited

It looks like it takes a while for the international ATM network to split out the foreign fee from the withdrawal amount.

For my previous withdrawal from October 29th, I now see a separate Foreign Fee for my withdrawal of $1000 HKD:

10-29 FOREIGN FEE Oct 29 08:05 3016 $ 3.87

10-29 NONCITIBANK ATM WITHDRAWAL Oct 29 08:05 3016 $ 129.00

The fee split takes a while (around 2 days)... and once it happens the 3% charge is readily apparent.

Misc Stuff I bought related to PCCW

Bought a 32" Sharp LCD TV, LC-32BX5H for a special price of $4,380HKD. Part of a special offer when getting NowTV. This is pretty good considering the prices I'm seeing online range from $6,000 to $8,000. Turns out this TV has 32" WXGA (1366 x 768) resolution. Funny though since the TV seems blurry to me... though I don't have HDTV.

Monthly fee for NowTV is $253HKD/month.
Monthly fee for PCCW Mobile 3G - $190HKD/month

PCCW Blackberry service ordered in March. Service commenced April 10th, 2008.
18 month BES contract.
8820 retails for $4,488HKD, but this fee is waived with the 18 month contract.
Prepaid $3000 HKD for the 8820, which gets paid back to me over the course of 18 months by a deduction off my monthly bill.
Here's the prepay repayment schedule over 18 months:
HK $167 x (1st-17th) + HK$ 161 x 1( 18th) = $3000
Blackberry Enterprise Service - $658HKD/month (-$167 or $161 if final month)
1200 min voice w/ Unlimited China Data (Macau not included)

Blackberry Caveats

The service I have is the unlimited data plan for both Hong Kong and China from PCCW. This does not include Macau.

I was shocked to get a charge of about 3000 HKD (about 400 USD) when I was using my phone in Beijing for around 10 days. It turns out that the plan only supports DATA. Voice is still roaming, which averages to about 1 USD/minute!!

I called about an 'unlimited voice roaming' plan for China, but no such plans exist.

For travelers, best thing to do is to bring 2 phones - one for Blackberry/data service, and a local voice phone using a local prepaid card.