Remit2India Service Review

Couple of my colleagues had very bad service experience with Remit2India. Their main complaints are:
1) First one didn't get the rate promised by the website. She understand that rate depend on the date on which money gets cleared. During the entire duration of the transaction, site showed the rate no lower than 48.50 however he got the rate of 47.75. This seems like downright fraud. Also it took around 10 days for the transaction to complete which is very slow.

2) Second one had very bad experience with the customar service. He tried to cancel the transaction. Person on the phone asked him to send email. They never replied to email(s). He called again and was told that they are creating a ticket. Next time my friend called, person didn't know anything about the ticket. My friend is very unhappy with the service.

From these two references it seems remit2India is not a service to use. If you have used remit2india, please share your experince.

Best Rate for sending money to India

I did comparsion of exchange rates and fees charged by various services for sending money to India. Today's reference rate from Reserve Bank Of India (http://www.rbi.org.in/) is Rupee 40.97 for 1 US Dollar. All the rates should be looked in context of this reference rate. Rates offered on a given day will change.

I found HDFC offers best rates and lowest charges. ICICI bank was second. Here is my analysis:

1) HDFC Bank

Fees: No fees
Exchange Rate:
For 11 - 1000$ --> 1$ = 40.59 Indian Rupees
For 1001 - 3500$ --> 1$ = 40.68 Indian Rupees
For 3501 - 5000$ --> 1$ = 40.73 Indian Rupees

2) ICICI Bank
Fees: 2$ for 1000$ and free above it.
Exchange Rate:
For 1000$ --> 1$ = 40.35
For 5000$ --> 1$ = 40.46253

3) Western Union
Fees: $81 for 900$ transaction. They have limit of 1000$ so I tried 900$ transaction and they showed the fees of $81.
Exchange Rate:
For 900$ --> 1$ = 40.2864996

4) Xoom.com
Their online calculator didn't allow for more than 1000$. They have service fee of 15$ for the standard service and no fee for value service.

Exchange Rate:
For 1000$ --> 1$ = 39.70

5) eMoneyGram.com. This site also has limit of 1000 US Dollars. But has reasonable rates and has one day delivery. So it is good if you want to send money quickly.

Same Day Service Fee $15

Exchange Rate
For 1000$ : 1 US Dollary = 40.376700 INR


There are two other big services. CitiNRI and TimesOfMoney.com. I couldn't figure out any exchange rate information from their web site. I have no idea of TimesOfMoney.com but from what i have heard from my friends ICICI rates are much better than Citi bank. If that's true then Citi rates are lower than HDFC and ICICI.

Based on this if I am tranferring big amount I will definitely use HDFC bank. I have used ICICI bank in the past and their service was good.

Western Union fees are horrible. Only attracition is they allow for very quick money transfer. Receiver can pick money in India minutes after your transaction is done. I will use this only when I need to send money very urgently but then it only allows 1000$ which is pretty useless in emergency (atleast in my case.)