banking tribulations

I’ve said it before: the Dutch banking system is not the shining jewel of the nation. Or at least, not the PINpas (bankcard) portion of it. Rudder and I both had our bankcards replaced several times in the one year we lived here. When I got here this trip, I hadn’t even gotten out of the airport before I found that once again my card was dead. The bank promised to send a new card to the branch where I could pick it up, then promptly turned around and sent it to Taiwan instead (the gu explained “Oh, they never should have told you they could send it here. They can only do that when a new PIN is issued – to issue a card with the same PIN it never passes through the system where a person can see it and pull it out of the normal path.” Of course, had I known that it would not have been any problem to have the PIN changed!

Fortunately it arrived before Rudder left home, and I only had to wait an extra week or so until he brought it here …. where it lasted for less than a week before once again totally demagnetizing.

Full disclosure: there’s a small magnet in my purse that holds the flap shut. However, since my US bank card, US credit card, Taiwan bank card, and Taiwan credit card seem to live quite happily in the same purse, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the Dutch card to put up a little resistance.

Fed up, I decided to take my business elsewhere. My current bank is Rabo; I decided to open a new account at Abn Amro and move my money to it. So I looked up Abn Amro’s webpage (whose English-language pages talk a lot about all the services they have for expats) and then called them, to make sure that, since I have a Dutch national ID number I could open an account even though I don’t live here. After transferring me three times, they conferred and agreed I could. So I looked up the opening hours (better than Rabobank’s), told my boss I’d be in late, and headed over this morning to open an account.

They wanted something official with my address on it. I showed them my Taiwan Alien Resident Card, which indeed has the address on it, but in Chinese. Not good enough, it had to be in Dutch or English. (Why Taiwan would have official forms in either language is beyond me.) I showed them my employment contract (normally required to open an account when you’re an expat here). Not good enough: no address. Finally she suggested I get Rabobank to print out something with the address on their official letterhead, since they do have it on file. When I went back to the hotel to wait until the other bank opened, I realized I had the page my bankcard came stuck on, which did have my address, so I took it back to them. Not good enough: no date.

By then it was nearly 9:30, so I headed out across the Centrum to Rabobank. The guy there printed my statement, with address and date, and put an official stamp on it, with absolutely no trouble or unnecessary comments. (Though more regret for the problems they’d caused me would have been welcome.) I took that back, and this time the dragon at the front desk let me pass to the next level. I sat there waiting for ten minutes or so, then got to see someone …. who examined all my papes, heard my story, conferred with a colleague, told me Abn Amro’s card’s are just as bad as Rabobanks, and that they wouldn’t give me an account anyway because I wasn’t going to be here long enough.

I’m beginning to think banks here don’t want my money.

So then I went back to Rabobank. where the nice lady, having eard me talking to her colleague earlier, said, “Oh, wasn’t that what they needed?” then helped me take out some money since I can’t use my card to pay for things, arranged to have a new card (and new PIN) sent to their branch, and depostied a lot of loose change for me. I suppose the whole thing made me feel a little better about my current bank. They may fuck up sometimes, and they may have the world’s wimpiest cards, but at least they’re pleasant to deal with.