Bank of China Charges

It's fairly common for the bank which receives an incoming wire transfer to deduct a fee of some sort. This is distinct from the fee which your bank charges for making the transfer.

Only point you could make is that a travel agent in the business of receiving payments by wire transfer should know there's going to be a charge and advise you beforehand, so you don't have to make a second payment.

I'll take this as a segue to complain about Bank of China for a second.

My current employer pays me into BoC in US$. BoC charges me to withdraw my own money in dollars, charges me to put my money into RMB, charges exorbitant fees to make an international transfer, and will not allow me to make a withdrawal from any bank other than the bank where my account was originally opened. This is the absolute most terrible bank in the history of banks and should be boycotted.

With that said, I am not shocked one single bit that they took out an extra $10 fee, but I am surprised that the tour operator was surprised.

If principles get to you you're going to have a hard time in Tibet!?

You're not the only one thats noticed this fee. BofC in Lhasa seem to have started charging a $10 fee this year on some transactions. I don't know why..... It is very frustrating. I think Ill make it an afternoon mission to find out what is going on next time I'm in Lhasa.

This is the absolute most terrible bank in the history of banks

I'm sure you can find plenty of Argentinians who'd disagree

What is ten bucks in the scheme of things? And, the receiving bank did have a role to play in any case by transferring the money. Every time I buy gear from overseas I pay a transaction fee, as do we all.
The Bank of China is not your local bank, they operate in a different jurisdiction.

I would be more interested in getting a less greedy bank at home, to be honest, around $50 looks like gouging on their part: 6.25% of the total tranferred! Nice money if you can get it.

Not unsympathetic, cam, but best to simply accept this small extra impost as the cost of doing business, and value your own time chasing this more highly.

good points pj - but the issue here is that when I transfer $$ to BoC in Lhasa and I click the "Accept all charges" box on my online banking....I should be "accepting all charges" so that the agency in Lhasa is not short on their payment..........

Maybe I need to be sending BoC in Lhasa an invoice for my wasted time trying to track exceedingly slow and lost transactions - which is quite common with them too!

Well, the incoming international wire fee is to the account holder receiving the money (that would be the Tibetan tour company). This is not a BoC scam and it's part of their schedule of fees--all banks have this available to their account holders unless they are elite or premier status. BoC in other Chinese cities and banks not BoC all have this, so if Lhasa BoC has not been charging all these years, consider it a gift. $10 is actually a pretty low charge for incoming intl wires by current standards.

The tour company should have been fully aware that this is charged for foreign incoming wires, and should either bury it into the cost of the tour and then account for it internally any way they want. Or, in their online ordering system, should have it line-itemed as an additional fee for customers choosing the international wire payment method. I'm surprised that they are surprised. Unless the OP was the very first customer that made payment this way, surely they would have encountered this before with their bank.

Given that the amount relative to the deposit already paid is tiny, I would suggest to the OP that they either try to negotiate the extra $10 away, or to pay it in equivalent Chinese RMB when they arrive in Lhasa. What I would NOT agree to is to pay wire fees to my own bank that are more than the amount in question, in order to make a second international wire for the balance!

On a more general note...BoC is indeed one of China's more obnoxious financial institutions to deal with.

jonesy, even National Bank of Australia charges a fee for accepting a TT.

Over the years, the banks in both Hong Kong and China (I used HSBC in Hong Kong, plus CCB in China) charged occasionally (not always) the international remittance a fee, usually around HK$60 or RMB 50 - 100.

But what confuses me most was that nothing is clear, because there are so many other remittances I received and they were charged nothing. The banks couldn't give a very precise answer.

To be frankly, if it happens, I never feel "cheated" by the tour group, and I'm sure your tour guide won't feel cheated by you. It's only a weird fee imposed by the bank.

Depends on the agreement of you and the tour, I think you can just tell your tour guide to cover the balance first and you pay him back while you are in Lhasa. The deposit is a way to confirm your tour, so US$10 more or less won't make much a difference. (Or you can, as others suggested, ask your tour guide to cover this by their company, they would probably accept it as well.)