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Originally Posted by Groove
Westpac used to charge me $10 to deposit four US$ cheques. Now
they want $10 per cheque if the cheques are from different banks!
Who do you bank with and what do they charge for US$ deposits?
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If you've been doing it for a while then ask to speak to the manager. The Westpac policy seems to vary depending upon the branch and/or who happens to serve you. On top of that the procedure changes fairly frequently, I can recall about 4 changes since mid 2003. Back then it was $10 per cheque with each one considered an individual transaction.
Now I get an unlimited number of same currency cheques deposited for a flat $10. I did have someone new recently try to tell me that they needed to be sorted by bank rather than currency, but she backed off when I told her how they'd been doing it at that branch for 6 months.
quantum-x: interesting that you had the same thing for 5 bucks...
I'm considering opening an onshore foreign currency US dollar account, which means I can:
1. deposit up to 8 cheques for $15 (this fee is probably negotiable)
2. the balance is in US dollars so there's no conversion loss until you withdraw funds
3. when you do withdraw to your AUD account, you get the
wire rate (eg $USD1000=$AUD1268.07) instead of the
cheque rate ($USD1000=$AUD1259.46)
So you can sit on your funds until the dollar looks good, plus you get a slightly better conversion rate. On the minus side it will probably complicate tax affairs, and I'm not sure whether you get charged the $AUD8 wire receiving fee when you transfer funds from your USD to AUD account.