Great to hear they've decided to pay up! Maybe next year (or other races) they will be more open with and upfront with the conditions under which the prize money will be paid. I've got no problems with race organisers setting the prize money based on number of elite entries (at least until the sport attracts some bigger corporate sponsors), provided its disclosed alongside the prize breakdown, so everyone knows what's at stake when they decide to travel a long way to a race.
missymoo said..
How are they going to send cheques to the paddlers from overseas? Would you even be able to cash a cheque from another country? If it is possible, I imagine the banks would deduct a fair bit of it in fees and it probably still wouldn't be cleared by Xmas!! They are probably just trying to shut everybody up and hoping that not many will bother to supply their details..........
Yep, you can take an overseas cheque to most local banks, but they will hit you with a stack of fees, so you'd want to be getting at least a few hundred bucks to make it worthwhile. Commbank charge a flat fee of $10 per cheque on top of their conversion rate for
buying foreign cash (which is significantly lower than the rate that they sell it to you at) with a 30-day clearance period and there may or may not be a commission on top of that? I'm guessing most banks would be similar.
I got a $50 cheque the day before coming home from the US on one trip, it was the weekend and banks were closed so I couldn't cash it before leaving the country. Only option left was to cash it here and take the loss on the fees. The dollar was about equal at the time, but after fees, I translated to around $37 in my account and had to wait a month to be able to use it.
Foreign exchange, western union etc will probably have a similar fee structure, but sometimes their fees can be higher, even if the exchange rate looks better on paper, or vice versa.
If you're still in the country where the cheque was issued, your best bet is to go to the bank the cheque was issued from and cash it in person (unless the race organisers are happy to give you cash).
I reckon if you were an Aussie regularly travelling to the states (or Europe) and expecting to be winning a reasonable amount of money, your best bet would be to find a friend who lived there and was happy for you to use their address, then open a local bank account, and use it each time you're there. You'd save a crap load of money compared to transferring money over, international transaction fees, credit card charges etc etc. and then transferring prize money back. If you were making enough prize money to be ahead, then transfer the difference back after every few trips, and if you weren't covering all your costs at least you'd be wasting less on fees. Either way, you'll be better off with a local account, if you can get approval to open one.
