International Banking

Given all the fun I had doing this last time, I thought I'd keep a running account of my attempt to transfer funds from my US credit union to my Canadian bank account. The credit union offers good services; I was happy to be a member when I was living in California, and to keep more money there than in the Big Evil bank which has slightly more competence but is still, shall we say, developmentally delayed when it comes to acknowledging that people sometimes live outside the US. The credit union clearly has even less experience doing anything international, despite being a subsidiary(?) of a major multinational corporation with employees from and in a huge number of countries around the world. Also their service centre employees, who sound chipper and articulate on the phone, appear to have sawdust where their thinkers should be.

PROLOGUE
Remembering the three tries it took to get the transfer through successfully when I was imminently departing North America, I decide to log into my account online to see if they've made online international wire transfers a thing.

They haven't.

I initiate a chat with their online help service, which oddly I don't think is staffed by bots. Kristynia informs me I should phone the call centre to see if my account is eligible to make a wire transfer. I phone. It is. I gird for battle.

EPISODE 1
Every last tiny little detail of the transfer information has to be letter-for-letter, punctuation-for-punctuation correct, or it won't go through. I haul out my Folder of Money Stuff and get the sheet my Canadian bank gave me for this purpose, and also all the information for the account I'm transferring from, to pass the dragon at the gate of the call centre.

( And so we begin ... )