On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 04:21:55PM -0500, Geordie Birch wrote: > And I can spend my Canadian dollars in Canada, but good luck trying to get > rid of them in a town like Arcata California, or Berkeley even. US > dollars on the other hand can be used with no problems in many small > retail outlets in Canada. Big liquidity difference between the two. Though, more often than not, the small retail outlets will bone you on the exchange rate so American currency spends at around the same value as Canadian currency, and then go profit off the difference themselves. You pay for the convienence of not having to walk to the Canada Trust, Royal Bank or Toronto Dominion on the corner and get something closer to wholesale exchange for yourself. Just because American money does spend overseas doesn't mean it spends well or is the brightest way to pay for something. > An aside: I recently exchanged some $US for $CDN at a bank in Vancouver > and received a small amount of US currency back in exhange for itself. > Only in Canada. No, that's typically how retail exchange rates work anywhere in the world. Find an ATM and use that when you need cash, instead of changing bills at banks, or change only small amounts ($40?) at a time, so when you leave the country, you're not stuck with a lot of what home considers really stylish Monopoly money and strange looking subway tokens. You'll get Canadian currency at wholesale withdrawn from your account and put into your hand. A check-card is invaluable for the same reasons, and if where your shopping takes Interac (nearly every business in Canada does), you're almost gauranteed to be able to use an ATM card with pin number. No, I'm not sure what currency the ATM is talking about when it reads off your account balance, either, I've yet to figure this one out, and I don't think what currency it's showing your balance in is consistant between banks. Why they don't tell you if you're looking at a US figure or a figure at the current Canadian exchange rate is beyond me. -- .''`. Baloo <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> : :' : proud Debian admin and user `. `'` `- Debian - when you have better things to do than to fix a system
Attachment:
pgpnWeOynBkUH.pgp
Description: PGP signature