It has been years since I learned the hard way and have never dealt with an Australian bank forex again. This earlier topic has a number of cases.
including
and while this example is not unique to Australia it a scam by another name - it is common in some countries and rare to non-existent in others.
I routinely follow the xrates to manage multi-national personal finances and taxes and our banks have one of two operating principles for incomings. One option is to offer very poor exchange rates compared to those available elsewhere (at least on the US side). Some banks only accept transfers already denominated in $AUD (some warn there could be substantial costs if they need to exchange an incoming transfer in $[foreign currency] through a 3rd party, and others state they will refuse the transfer if in a foreign currency).
Transferring out is another issue, already the subject of Choice articles.
