[loveangel]

Andy,

You've come up against a simple fact of financial life: When you deal in multiple currencies, you get screwed every which way.

As you've discovered, your bank makes a special charge just because the payer and payee currencies are different. You could avoid that by shopping around. With other banks, or other payment methods, you won't get that charge. But, then you'd get caught by the markup on the exchange rate, or a commission charge on the foreign exchange, or some other ingenious method that a financial institution has devised to part you from your money.

Buying gift vouchers won't help much, as you'd still have to go through the currency exchange at the time of purchase of the card. (But, if your bank charges include a per-transaction element, then there would be an advantage in buying one large gift card compared to several smaller book purchases.)

The only solution is to obtain your ebooks from a source that didn't involve currency exchange - but then you'd lose the benefits of direct shopping from your Kindle and instant delivery via wireless.

Of course, none of this is related to the price of ebooks vs paper books, or the fact that in the UK we pay VAT on ebooks but not on paper books. Those issues have been thrashed to death in other threads in the forum.

Well said