Before a recent trip to Spain, I bought my euros with a debit card at an ICE bureau de change at St Pancras, as I heard ICE was the most competitive. However, when I looked at the receipt, I saw that €400 had cost me £360.48. I know the euro has been climbing steadily but this seems extremely high. When I returned home, I found that a separate transaction for €400 (from an ATM) had only cost me £328. ICE had charged me 9% more than the ATM. How can this be justified? Mike Chamberlain, London

ICE replies: “Airport and station bureaux offer last-minute convenience. We have to suffer very high rents at many of these locations – which inevitably results in higher margins to our customers. As for the ATM, there are card-scheme rules at present that mean certain card transactions at an ATM cannot be charged the usual foreign-exchange margin. This was undoubtedly the case with your card, as you were getting the transaction at virtually a spot rate from the ATM. So it’s not so much that the bureau was unreasonable as that the ATM was exceptional.”

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