Doing battle with the bank

Remember on one of my last posts I mentioned that I had to go do battle with the bank? Well here’s the deal. I’m posting this as an educational/cautionary tale as much as to relieve some frustration.

When DH and I arrived we knew we would have to get a French bank account. DH would be paid by the lab and we had to have an account to deposit the money. We did a bit of research and, based on the size and stability of the bank, and also the proximity of the nearest branch to our apartment, we chose BNP Paribas. Here is what happened.

We arrived at the bank and were sent up to see M. K. He was to open our account. We gave him all our information. We told him, twice, what our complete address was. Our apartment is in a large complex with over 100 apartments. Also we are renting. It was critical to put the complex name, building number, and the apartment owner’s name on the address. Both times he nodded in assent. When I saw the documents we were to sign, the address only listed the street address of the complex. My mistake here was to not challenge this. I put it down to a vagary of their looney-tunes database that it didn’t print the entire address.

We were told that we had to prove that we lived at this address. Normally one presents a utility bill with the address on it and that is sufficient proof. Being renters of course, there was no such utility bill. We were told by M. K that the bank would send us a letter and, once we had received it, we would bring it back in and that would be proof that we resided at this address. (It only takes the average nitwit about a minute or two to realize how easy this is to fake.) This of course assumes that the address is correct AND that La Poste works. Well you already know that the address was incorrect. As to the efficiency of La Poste, when we asked DH’s colleagues at the lab what they thought of La Poste they laughed and laughed and laughed. Not encouraging to say the least, but we didn’t know any of this at the time of signing on for this account.

We were also told that we could not access our checkbook or bank credit cards until we had proven that we were domiciled at this address. We figured it would take a maximum of 10 days to get all this done.

Now all this time I am communicating with M. K via email. First off, to correct the mailing address, then to notify him that we still hadn’t yet received the letter. To these emails I get these very terse replies and at that only after my insistence on an acknowledgement for a couple of days. He replied with things like “Le nécessaire a été fait” or “Quand vous avez fait preuve de domicile et pas avant.” Stuff like that. Like he’s some sort of potentate or something. By now I’m doing a slow burn.

Three weeks into the deal we still didn’t have our checkbook or credit cards. The only access we had to our money (we had wire transferred money from our account in the States) was to physically go to the bank and withdraw cash! Finally, the registered letter arrives, I go to the post office and retrieve the letter and bring it back to M. K at the bank. Now he says he needs to wait until the post office sends him proof that I picked up the ding dang letter! That was it. I was furious. If he had listened in the first place we would have received the letter weeks ago and this would be done, right?

I got home and called BNP’s Customer Relations. I always try to be as nice as I can to customer relations people. It’s not their fault that somebody on down the line messed up and I know that so I’m polite. So I’m explaining the situation and I’m being polite and the more I explain the madder I get so by the end I’m screaming at the poor woman on the other end that I don’t ever want to see M. K again. I don’t ever want to hear his name; I want him out of our affair. I did apologize to the nice lady later. She assured me that I would now have a new conseillière, a Mme L, and that from now on she would attend to our needs. Well, that was one good thing. I asked for her email address and promptly sent her the email stream between M. K and myself. Lo and behold I got a very nice, polite, email back within a half hour. This was much better! Then I get another email from Mme L informing me that, unfortunately, I would now have to get a “lettre de bonne renommée” from our bank in the States!

So now I have to wait for our bank in California to open so I can call them and get a “lettre de bonne renommée” Fedexed (because I’ve learned my lesson about La Poste). Well, I couldn’t get through to them. It seems that there was some construction going on near their main office and the phone lines got cut so there was no reaching them that day (so you see, the French don’t have a monopoly on ineptitude). I spent all day trying to get through. (Thank heaven for Skype. If you are planning on spending ANY time overseas at all, get Skype, don’t hesitate, just do it. Make sure all your relatives get it. Just do it.) Another day wasted. Still no check book or credit cards to access OUR money. Next day the phone lines are up and running. I get hold of a nice lady at our bank and, after a bit of research, realize that what the BNP wants is a letter of guaranty from our bank. Never mind they’ve already received two wire transfers from this same bank, they still want a letter of guaranty! Great. So I get the letter Fedexed (to the tune of $65!!!) and DH and I head for Barcelona for work and pleasure with no credit cards. (You can only use credit cards with a “puce” on them at the tolls on the toll roads. You can’t use the kind of card where you have to swipe a magnetic strip.) It’s now been three weeks since we opened the account.

Now, we’re still getting cash all this time. You can use your US credit cards in ATM machines all over Europe and get Euros. But the point is we have Euros already in the bank and can’t access them.

From Barcelona I track the package and know that it has arrived at the bank. I email Mme L to ask about it and get no reply. What now? We get back to Montpellier and, first thing Monday morning, I get an email from Mme. L. Her daughter had been sick so she had to stay home on Friday. I can completely dig this so all is forgiven. Then a new email; we now have to prove that we live at our address in the States!!! WTF!!!! Of course we need a utility bill. So another call to the States. (I tell you, Skype, Skype, Skype!!!!) And again, just to make sure the French haven’t cornered the market on idiocy, I get some nimwad who tells me I can’t get a copy of our statement because I’m not the primary account holder, that’s my DH! I ask her if my name is somewhere on the account, oh yes, can I give her the last four digits of DH’s SS#? yes, but that’s not enough. I have to wait for DH to get home from work (the IT Nazi at the lab won’t let him install Skype on his computer at work) to call PG&E and get an electronic copy of our utility bill. When he calls, much exercised at this whole thing, he’s told that what the first nimwad told me was absolutely incorrect and that I should have been given all I needed first thing!

Fortunately, I am able to forward a PDF of the utility bill to Mme L. and she can print it. Hurray!!! The end is in site, yes? No. She has to forward all this to the “cellule de validation” and she doesn’t know if they are behind or how long it will take them to get this cleared. We opened this account on Oct 1. It is now Nov 2. By now we are just numb. But wait, is that light at the end of the tunnel? On Nov 5, we get an email that our account has been cleared and we can come get our check book and our credit cards. I can’t believe it. I email back, can I get both cards or does DH need to be present? Oh, he needs to be present. OK. So I dash up to the lab to pick him up and we go to the bank. Yes, here is our check book. Here are our credit cards. But wait, there’s a new wrinkle. We do have our “codes secrets” don’t we? No, we never got them. You were supposed to have received them in the mail!!!!!

Mme L. is really a sweet thing and even she’s getting peeved at the ineptitude of this whole story. She has our “codes secrets” reissued and we are now waiting for them from La Poste. Once we have received them we need to withdraw a sum of money from a BNP-recognized ATM machine. This will then activate the cards and then we can, finally, use them with retailers!!!!!! We leave to go home in less than 6 weeks.

What is remarkable is that this country functions at all. (It's November so everyone goes on strike.) One of our colleagues at the lab spent 5 years in the States before returning to France. He is constantly amazed that things actually manage to work. I mean the BNP Paribas bank is not a slouch. They own Bank of the West. They are partnered with Citibank. How do these people interact when at the bottom levels there is so much ineptitude? Why were we not told from the get go that we would need all these documents. Can you imagine going into an American Bank, depositing your money and waiting almost 6 weeks for a checkbook?

Here’s another good one. At our branch of the BNP Paribas, there’s a sign that warns that if you want to withdraw more than 1500 Euros in cash you need to give them 48 hours of lead time, 48 HOURS!!! Can you see that in an American bank?

So I have to go down to the post box to see if our “codes secrets” have arrived. All of you have a great day!