Payment Methods
We accept payment by any of the following methods:
Follow the respective links (or scroll down the page) for details.
For legal, tax, and currency market fluctuation reasons, your country of residency determines the currency of your invoice. All prices are set to be equal at the start of the year, and they are episodically adjusted in one currency or another during the course of the year to maintain these rough parities.
If you need to sign up in a currency other than your own (you are paid in $US even though you live in Canada, for instance), contact us and explain your case. We may be able to help. But this is not an invitation to currency arbitrage: it typically requires some pretty complex financial filings on our part, and carries a cost to you.
If, after your initial payment, you need to pay the balance of your invoice in a different currency, we will convert the amount due on your invoice into your new currency, and add a 2% currency conversion charge. We cannot recalculate your invoice, in whole or in part, in your new currency. The only way to accomplish that is to cancel the services / trips initially subscribed (accepting the attendant cancellation penalties), and to re-subscribe in your new currency.
Check / Cheque
Our North American office handles check / cheque payments in $ (US or C), and our European office handles checks in €uros. Checks must be drawn on banks domiciled in the country of that currency. For instance, US checks must be drawn on a US bank (any euro-zone bank works for payments in €). Checks / cheques should be made payable to Blue Marble Travel.
We accept checks / cheques in $US, $C(AD), and in €uros. If you have an account in one of these countries, this is the least expensive way to settle an invoice. For your convenience, you may post cheques / checks to whichever office you please. The payment will be recorded upon receipt by that office. You may also address questions or concerns to any office: they will naturally be handled even if your booking was not initially received by that office.
If the good or service for which you are paying is invoiced in another currency than your check / cheque (for instance, a € apartment rental for which you are paying with a $ check), a 2% currency conversion charge will apply. This is generally less than your credit card company will charge to convert a € payment into dollars, so you are typically still ahead of the game. Currency exchange rates can be checked here: the rate used will be the rate in effect on the date on which the check / cheque is posted to us (postmark on the envelope determines this date).
Payments originating in other countries must generally be made in euros, by credit card or by bank transfer. If you wish to pay with a dollar- or euro-denominated cheque originated by a bank not in the corresponding currency zone, consult us for applicable banking charges. But they tend to be high, and we are not able to do anything about that, since the banksters are bigger than we are, and not typically very nice.
Credit Card
To pay by credit card, please complete a €uro authorization for all charges other than the purchase of a railpass.
Even if your account statement is in dollars, payments by credit card (Visa or MasterCard) are always debited in €, unless the bulk of the purchase being made is a railpass issued in the U.S. If you are a resident of the U.S. or Canada, and are settling a dollar balance, use this converter to calculate a €uro amount to authorize.
Then mail or fax it to any of our offices, or scan it and send it as a pdf, along with your trip application. Before you authorize us to charge your card, please be sure to see below, “What Can I Pay By Credit Card?” as 3rd party services may be subject to a surcharge.
Example: if you are making a payment of $1,000 C, convert the sum to €uros. If the conversion rate is $2 C to the €uro, $1,000 C = 500€. You would thus authorize 500€ to be charged. A payment of $1,000 C would be credited to your account statement (the actual amount in € that was debited to your card will also be shown).
Use the $US authorization, instead, if you are buying a European rail pass, and not more than $100 US worth of related train reservations and / or agency charges per pass. For these purchases, we can “flow your card through” to Rail Europe, who will charge your card directly in US dollars.. The “merchant” will appear as Rail Europe on your credit card statement.
Details
Paying by credit card does not change the currency of your account statement. If you are on one of our bike trips, your statement will be in $US for US residents, $C for Canadian residents, and €uros for residents of all other countries. It will always be in €uros if you are only subscribing to local, Paris-offered services or trips.
If your account statement is in $ (US or C), we do not charge any commission or fee to convert the euro amount of your payment into $. However, your credit card banksters issuers will probably add a foreign currency processing charge. Writing a cheque / check (or making a bank transfer, but which incurs additional costs) avoids this charge.
If your funds are in a currency in which we do not invoice (rand, Hungarian pengos, trading cards), credit cards may nonetheless be the least expensive way to pay for your trip. The banking costs involved in ordering a euro wire transfer may be higher than the credit card issuer’s foreign exchange commission.
What Can I Pay by Credit Card?
Cards (Visa or Mastercard) can be used to pay for any services we ourselves provide ourselves, without surcharge. These include our cycle trips, our baggage transfer services, luggage storage, apartment rentals....
They may also be used to pay for things we buy on your account, such as hotel rooms or train tickets. However, since we ourselves must pay for these things with company cheques, a 2% charge applies, roughly corresponding to the amount charged by the credit card company to process the charge.
Our debiting of credit cards in €uros only, regardless of the currency of your invoice, often provokes surprise, and sometimes consternation. But it actually saves our riders money, even those in $ countries. If you would like to see why, jump to the “‘These People Have Too Much Time on Their Hands’ Explanation” at the bottom of this page. Synopsis: credit cards are issued by banks. At this point, we appear to have ample information on the moral fiber of that industry.
Bank Transfer
We accept bank (a.k.a. “wire”) transfers in €uros only, sent to our French account. Contact us for banking information. This is an economical payment alternative for €uro zone guests. It also works for travellers from Africa, Asia, Oceania, or South America, who do not wish to pay by credit card. Banking costs are borne by the payee.
Our bank charges 20€ per incoming transfer from outside the euro zone, even if the sender explicitly assumes all charges. It only charges 1€ for transfers denominated in euros, from within the euro zone. We’ll treat you to the euro....
“These People Have Too Much Time on Their Hands” Explanation of Credit Card Acceptance
Why We Debit Credit Cards in €uros
Accepting credit cards is a difficult process for a travel company working in several currencies, and especially for one with North American or Oceanic travellers. Once upon a time, we accepted credit cards for debits in $US. We were in the process of setting up to do the same in Canadian and Australian dollars. But, on a certain infamous day in a certain infamous September, this suddenly became a very expensive exercise. And you, our guests, were the ones asked to pay for it. So we stopped. Does this mean that the terrorists have won? Yes. Can we all go home now?
It would seem that a lot of people suddenly decided not to travel in the months immediately following 9/11/01. And they expected the credit card people to cover the cancellation costs of all those “non-refundable” tickets they didn’t use. Somewhat remarkably, and no doubt reacting in shock, the card people pretty much did this, at least in the US. But now they are a tad jumpy about the whole travel industry.
Further, accepting credit cards other than in person makes the card issuers nervous when the product being sold is as “intangible” as travel. They are afraid we won’t be careful enough in identifying our guests, and will allow purchases on stolen cards. And no one can repossess your trip....
Thus it is that North American and Oceanic “discount rates” (credit card company commissions) of 5 - 7% are typical for trip outfitters such as ourselves. Even at that rate, it’s hard to find banks to take the business!
Furthermore, card issuers do not allow us to pass this cost on by surcharging credit card payments. And, in the absence of a surcharge, everyone would pay by card, because most of us don’t even know where our chequebooks are any more. So accepting cards for debits in any sort of dollar would imply that we raise the price of our trips by 5 - 7%. Currency conversion fees would then come on top of that (we can, of course, pass currency conversion costs on, but that would raise the prices even more). In sum, whenever you see a Tour Operator who accepts credit card payments in $, it should worry you. You are paying dearly for those unusable miles....
Obviously, we would just as soon you pay by check / cheque (we accept checks in $US, and cheques in Canadian $ or in €uros, drawn on banks in those respective currency zones). Or, that you send us large wads of cash in unmarked envelopes. But checks / cheques don’t give you points, or, as Bostonians call them, “jimmies.” And they mean you actually have to have the money, rather than just knowing you are going to at some point in the future. And maybe you don't have a bank account in any of our three currencies.... For all these reasons, paying by credit card is something many of you want to do.
Our Attempt to Save You Money
We have managed to avoid the high commissions discussed above by arranging to accept credit cards through our Paris office, for debits in €uros. Europeans are less jumpy at this moment in history, and the phenomena described above are not in play. Moreover, French banks are more heavily regulated, and can’t just wander around charging people whatever they please for services they don’t really provide..
So, you can charge all or part of any of our services to your credit card. If your statement is in dollars, simply convert the amount you wish to charge to €uros on the day you authorize us to process the charge, using the “mid-market” (commission-free) rate, which you can get from this web site.
Most credit card companies charge a foreign currency transaction fee, typically around 3%. These fees vary sufficiently that you should read the fine print in your cardmember agreements, and then choose the card you use accordingly. But this is always lower than the 7% our prices would have to climb to take cards in dollars, so you are still ahead of the game.
Example: if your card bills in $US, and you make a purchase in euros worth the euro equivalent of $10, your card issuer will bill you anything from $10.10 to $10.50. If you use your card for a trip deposit in the euro equivalent of $1,000, they will bill you for $1,010 - $1,050. Our understanding is that Capital One only bills 1% (and so would bill $1,010 in this example). If this is true, it makes Capital One cards the best to use. But we have never had clear confirmation on this, and if you call Capital One and ask, you get an endless voicemail loop. Or a variety of confused and contradictory responses. Or an endless voicemail loop with recorded confused and contradictory responses. All in an accent that you will have some trouble understanding unless you have travelled extensively in India, or live in South London.
Paying for 3rd Party Services With Your Card
We can also accept credit cards for 3rd party services (the purchase of a train ticket or a hotel room, for instance: things that we ourselves do not produce). However, we add a 2% surcharge to the cost of the service. This is because we cannot “flow your card through.” We ourselves pay for your goods or services by company cheque, and debit your card for our benefit. We thus lose the fee charged to merchants by credit card companies for card use. We cannot absorb this, since the services that we thus retail are generally provided to you without mark-up, or earn tiny commissions.
We hope you had better things to do than to read this far. If you did read this far, please accept our expression of sympathy.
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