I returned last week from a few days in San Miguel de Allende. Last time I checked, this lovely city was still in Mexico. My buddy, who lives there had told me he exchanged dollars at the bank all the time. So I walked into a bank, after first checking the Banamex rate on the internet. I put 5-$100s inside my passport, got in a short line, and walked out with pesos, at a rate that was $.02 higher than Banamex. As was my Cancun experience with Banamex when you just walk in and walk out after the transaction, they made a photo copy of the photo page of my passport. The local banks started doing this not too long before they stopped exchanging for non-customers. There is something here that does not make sense. Why can an American, tourist or resident, NOT exchange dollars here, yet it is a common practice in SMA? It really makes zero sense why you can exchange all you want at a crappy rate casa de cambio but cannot at the banks at a better rate. I don't know about other parts of Mexico, other than Merida where early last year, some banks were not buying dollars and some were. What's up??
I had the same experience in SMA last spring. I thought they were just slower adopting the new rules. Apparently they have decided to ignore them! Bueno!
T.J., what made you think they cannot? You confused me with this statement, made in the same post in which you talked about exchanging money, yourself, at Cancun banks. I've never encountered a problem exchanging dollars at the bank, here, though I'm aware there has been a limit on how much they would exchange- on a daily/monthly basis, for any one individual- which I haven't had reason to exceed, so far.
Honestly V, although I simply have not tried for a while, not too long ago, the banks would simply not permit a non customer to walk in and exchange money. This is an easy profit center for them. The supposed story was that the federal government decided that drug money was being laundered willy nilly through the federal banks and said "no mas". I do know that I tried, without ever mentioning a sum, to exchange at Banamex, Scotiabank and HSBC and they all told me that they were no longer permitted to buy dollars. I typically went to Banamex at Paseo Cancun and exchanged a reasonable amount of dollars, i.e. nothing huge, with no problems. I have also noticed that for a few months most of the Banamex offices no longer display their exchange rates in their windows. As I understand, if one is a customer with a "dollar account" they can exchange up to $1,500 US per month, roughly equivalent to Steve's bar bills. IF YOU HAVE BEEN ABLE TO WALK IN WITH ID AND DOLLARS, and walk out with ID and pesos, I would appreciate a hint here or in private, as to where. Cheers
