When you live in a foreign country, banking is always a concern that must be dealt with upon arrival. You have several choices and your choice typically depends on how advanced the financial system is in your chosen country. For instance, if you were moving to Europe which has a very advanced and competent financial system, you would get yourself a good credit card that does not charge a fee for foreign transactions and live through your plastic. If, though, you were sent to say India where the 40% - 50% of the economy is transacted through the black market, cash becomes the primary currency.
This leaves you with two options. Option 1 is to use you ATM card to withdrawal your cash. The upside to this is that you have all the mechanisms already in place to execute it. You have a US bank, an ATM card and best of all, since you are still paid directly into your US bank account, you have a reserve of money on which to draw. The downside is that your bank may want a fee or worse yet, a percentage of each withdrawal. This can get expensive very quickly.
Option 2 is that you set up a bank account in your new country. This is incredibly cumbersome in highly regulated countries like India and requires more paperwork than downgrading a sovereign nation’s bond rating. There are now, though, banks that have networks in many different countries that allow you to set up an account in your home country and effortlessly transfer money around the world for your discretionary use … or so they say.
When I was “selected” to go to India, I reached out to one such bank, HSBC. I have seen their ATM machines ion every country from Vietnam to Turkey, so I figured it must be a competent global bank. I figured wrong.
The odyssey began in June of 2010. I thought I would get ahead of the curve and open an HSBC account in the US. I went on line and filled out all the forms, but near the end of the process, the website crashed and the application could not be completed or submitted. I logged out and began again. When I tried to submit it this time, the website told me it was a duplicate application. Hum? I called their crack customer service folks in Buffalo, NY, but they were about as helpful as Nancy Pelosi in a deficit reduction workshop. In the end, they told me to wait a few days and resubmit the application on-line. The next day I left for India.
While in India, I was able to get in touch with someone in Buffalo who actually knew what to do. She put me in touch with a “Relationship Manager” who took all my information, submitted the application and said that a packet would be mailed to my house with all the account information and passwords to initiate the account. A month later, when I arrived back in Minneapolis, it had not arrived.
I called my “Relationship Manager” and he told me that it showed mailed and therefore it must be an error on my side. I did not take his assessment of the situation as quietly as he would have liked. We eventually agreed that HSBC should mail it again. I explained that I would be vacating he address in two weeks, so I need it post haste. Two weeks later, as I turned out the lights for the final time in the house, it still had not arrived. I gave up as I had more pressing issues at hand … like moving to India.
Three months later, I returned to the US for business. I, again, called my “Relationship Manager” to explain that I had not received the package. He told me he would once again mail it out. I explained that I no longer resided at that address and he would need to main it to a different address. He said that he could not do that. He would have to mail it to the address on the account. If I would go on-line and change the address, then he could mail it anywhere I wanted. I, choosing my words carefully, explained that the account password is in the package and without it, I cannot log on to change the address to which the package with the password should be mailed. Are you freak’n kidding me? He retorted that there was nothing he could do. I, then, asked for him to close the account. In order to close the account, he would need to send me a form and get my signature, but he could, once again, only send said form to the address on the account. I cannot fully account for the next ten minutes, but it would suffice to say that I invented a new category of rage – Bank Rage!
In the end, I worked my way up through the bank hierarchy and eventually found someone to close the account. And that is where the HSBC story should have ended, but it did not…
No comments:
Post a Comment