PERSONAL ACCOUNT

It takes a little forethought and mere seconds to boost holiday cash by 23pc

Which would you rather get in exchange for £500: €570, or €465? The difference between these two sums is, astonishingly, the difference in exchange rates offered by different travel money services at the same time.

All that’s needed in order to benefit from that extra €105 is a minuscule amount of forward planning and 45 seconds online.

I have always known airport rates are poor. But I travelled through a London airport at the end of last month and was amazed – horrified – to see the precise exchange rates on offer in the terminals.

For every £1, customers were being offered as little €0.93. This figure has, I’ve been told, dropped as low as €0.90 (even though the money market rate for sterling-euro has not dropped below €1.10 at any point since the EU referendum).

You hand over £500 and you’re given €465.

And I am sorry to have to report that people were queuing up for this service. Yes, happily queuing, apparently so delirious with the prospect of a holiday that they were prepared to throw cash away. I wanted to shout out a warning but, airport security being what it is, decided it was wiser to watch in silence as they were fleeced by a smiling cashier.

At the same time as £1 was being changed into €0.93, if you were making the reverse transaction you would have to hand over €1.40 to obtain £1!

I don’t especially want to put the boot into currency firms. I’ve no idea what it costs to rent a shop in an airport – a lot, I suppose. Clearly there are some people who are so clueless or careless that they will pay anything. (If firms sold €1 for £5 or even £10, would anyone buy? I fear the answer is yes.)

I looked online at the same time and found that the same firm was offering €1.14 per £1 for those who booked online.

All it would take is a few seconds – certainly less than a minute – and you could order your currency ahead, at that higher rate, and to be picked up at exactly the same airport kiosk.

Whatever you do this summer, don’t buy currency at airports.

My sympathies to the million-odd people who own shares in Santander, the Spanish-based bank that in years gone by took over Abbey National and Alliance & Leicester. Most came by their shares because they were customers of these former building societies.

Shamefully, this huge bank has chosen to make life hard for these people. By not maintaining a share listing on the London Stock Exchange, alongside the main listing in Madrid, it has stirred up all manner of a tax mess involving paltry sums.

This is not new. But it has bubbled up again because in the past few days shareholders have been contacted by Santander in connection with a “rights issue” – a commercial process

Holiday fever: travellers take leave of their senses at the airport, throwing money away at the currency desks