At a Bank
Before and after I came here, many people have warned me
that there would be a lot of troubles with banks at the
United States. However I have had none of them at all
despite I haven't been so careful about that.
At the middle of this July, my bank (Bank Boston) was
purchased by the other bank (Fleet Bank) and changed
its name as well as whole systems. And being a kind of fool,
I decided to go to the bank to make some arrangements on
my account. Here are the explanations about the arrangements.
Since I opened my bank account before settling down in
the place to live, I gave the account the address of my
working place in the University. And adding to this,
my wife hadn't come yet to this country at the time so that
I couldn't make the account sharing with her despite she
needed an ATM card in any cases. Furthermore Debit system
is quite popular in this country so that people can use
an ATM-Debit card to pay for everything as if it's a credit card.
Then to change my ATM card to shared Debit-ATM cards with
my wife was included to the arrangements I wanted to make.
Well, one day approximately a week after the bank changed
its name, I went to one of the bank's branch nearby the
university bringing my wife along. A middle aged woman
dealt with our case at the bank. The first task, changing the
address, was pretty simple and was done with in a minute.
And to combine the wife's name to the account was done
quickly without any difficulty too. Then she proceeded to
change our ATM card to Debit combined one. The first thing
she did was canceled my previous card otherwise a new card
couldn't be launched as she explained. Then she was stuck
and couldn't go any further process. Even before this happened
she had been struggling to proceed the process because
the entire bank's system had just changed and she apparently
didn't get used to it. She told us that an instructor for
the new system would come around one hour later and asked
us to come again at that time. So we got out and came again
exactly one hour later.
There was the instructor running around the bank's counters
to help the clerks. We went straight to the clerk and ask her
if the thing had gotten solved. It was indeed improved.
from this point, the instructor had been sticking to her and
gave her continuous instructions. And with her eager effort,
the process seemed to be done perhaps 40 minutes later.
Then she told us that the arrangement had been made and
we had to wait for another one week to get new Debit combined
ATM cards for both of us. However remembering that my previous
card was canceled, I asked her if we could have temporary ATM cards.
And her answer was negative. Well, maybe it wouldn't be
so difficult to live without withdrawing money for one week.
After those arrangement we still had one more thing to ask.
We happened to have a certain amount of cash ( ok, it was $5000)
at the time and it had to be deposited to my saving account.
Somehow my saving account had been closed when the bank had
changed its name because there was no money in it.
But it wasn't supposed to be a big deal. She opened up
the new saving account and deposited the cash into it.
Then she handed us a receipt of the deposition and everything
was done finally.
One week later I received "my" Debit ATM card. Somehow it
was sent to my working place instead of my apartment and
there wasn't one for my wife. I went to an ATM machine
nearby to check the balances of my both checking and saving account.
There was expected amount of money in the checking account
while the balance was zero at the saving account. Now the
$5000 was gone somewhere. Thanking god that I got the
receipt for that, I went to the bank again.
Another clerk took care of me, who was apparently better
used to handling the new system. First she found that
newly opened my saving account hadn't been clinked to
my ATM card. So she made some changes enabling me to access
my own money with my ATM card. Then I asked her that what
had happened to the wife's card. And she found that there
wasn't even a request for that. She apologized to me sincerely,
which you wouldn't expect Americans to do always.
Though I didn't have any intention to blame them from
the first place, it was enough to calm me down totally
all about those confusion.
Now I am waiting for the card
for my wife. This time I can be sure that there will be no problem.
And of course I made sure that there was the money in my saving
account. You don't expect to meet this kind of confusion in Japan.
Therefore for Americans Japanese people would seem to be unprepared
against those unexpected troubles at the places like banks or
public offices. Yes, everybody in the world knows that
one of the advantage of Japanese is to be organized and
systematized completely.