Comment #4892

god dammit. this annoys me to now end. as if the first one wasn't bad enough.

- Alex on God dammit

Tags: travel, italy, us to euros, banks, foreign exchange

I brought most of my money in US cash to Italy and was expecting to be able to change it at any bank here, you know like pretty much anywhere else in the world.
But Italy has some laws in place to stop money laundering or something, thanks mafia...

You need to have a bank account at the bank you're trying to change money at to get anything done and even then most banks aren't actual banks in the conventional sense but rather do most of there banking online. I'd be very surprised if they even carry cash for people to withdraw.

The banks that do change currencies have some crazy exchange rate. The current rate online is 1us to .95euros. They'll do it at 1us to .8x euros.

The exchange offices are even worse, doing it at 0.7x euros.

Who needs the mafia when the banks will screw you.