International Banking, Part IV

[tealin]

Tried to initiate another wire transfer yesterday. It went surprisingly well! I spelled everything out to the person at the call centre, they repeated everything back to me word for word as I'd spelled it, and seemed to have heard of both Vancouver and Cambridge, which was a nice surprise. Maybe, maybe, this time ...

I got the PDF form to check over and sign. Half the recipient bank's address was missing, as well as the last three digits of the destination account number, and my street address was spelled wrong.

When doing the rounds of corrections later, I learned that only the first two lines of the destination bank's address are shown on the form, and they have the rest but just don't show it. Because .... there's no chance any of that might be wrong? More likely because if they're wiring to another US bank, two lines of address is all you need, so why should the form be designed to show more?

All I can figure is there's some Floridian cryptid lurking in their HQ messing with both brains and computer networks, which may not be that different from its point of view. Frankly it inspires me to move the rest of my money out and close the account to save ever having to deal with them again, but I probably shouldn't do that until my GIC has matured ...


By the way, HI EX-TUMBLR people and welcome! I swear I blog about more interesting stuff than this most of the time!

Comments

[tealin]

Mostly I'm trying to take advantage of good US/Can exchange rates before the US economy (and society, ha ha) collapses again, so waiting until I'm there leaves me at the mercy of whatever's going on financially/internationally at the time. Plus, this credit union (I think you know to which I refer) is not exactly convenient to where I usually stay in LA (not that anything really is) so just nipping in to do a bit of wire transferring isn't really plausible. It'd be fine to do it by phone if they were remotely competent at executing the task, but sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person who's ever tried to make an international transfer with them!

(and HI!! It's so good to have you back!)

[amaliak]

I would say that in general the thing you are referring to has gotten WORSE across the board,even with us Stateside. I'll be lucky to get even an answer to a question without going up several tiers of "support". Good luck, my friend (and if there's anything I can do, do not hesitate).

[tealin]

Oh yeah, don't get me started on the service phobia of my UK ISP – I finally had to lodge an official complaint just for them to do their darn job after months of calling (because they had no online help).

But one would expect the employees of a financial institution at least to be able to fill out a form correctly – I mean, if they have problems with accurate data entry, they shouldn't be working at a bank. In a data entry department. For that matter, how did they graduate high school without being able to fill out a form? If nothing else, the US education system is very effective at teaching form-filling.

Or, you know, let the customer fill out their own darn from, and then if there are any mistakes in it it's the customer's own darn fault and everyone's time isn't wasted with this constant back-and-forth fixing things. This is the third time sending money with them and the first time everything's been right on the second try, nevermind the first.

[amaliak]

I feel like there's a general lack of interest in doing customer service jobs: I mean, I know that the UK prides itself on not being on not doing customer service "The American Way" but like, dude, what are you getting paid for? On the Yankee side of things, I seriously think that most people just have no pride in their work. Couple that with lawsuit-wary companies that underpay their employees and it's just bad for everyone. Every once in a while you get a gem of a person, but they are generally promoted out of customer service pretty quickly, lest they infect others.

[tealin]

All the more reason to introduce online money transfers like the rest of the world: you leave the liability squarely in the hands of the customer, get to boast about your futuristic technology, and get rid of some more service jobs! It's the American Way.

... I mean that mostly satirically, but it's baffling that the US's infatuation with doing everything technologically has gone so far as admittedly faulty electronic voting machines, but not everyday functional aspects of internet banking. It's ridiculous I need to phone them up, give them all the information I'd use to set up/sign into my online account, and rely on them to fill out the form (and, inevitably, hold their hands through the round of corrections) rather than just let me do it my bloody self.

[amaliak]

GRRRRRR. Though Lord knows that if they actually did that an did the American Thing of firing everyone, the online version would inevitably be crap as well. :(