So anyway, banks are in my bad books at the mo.
Heading to tokyo in a couple of days, so wanted to get some yen in cash seeing as the most technologically advanced city in the world has about 3 ATMs that accept foreign cards (unlike several tiny villages in India, Sri Lanka, Laos, Thailand and China where in recent years I’ve had no trouble getting money out of holes in walls…). Thinking that banks might look after their own customers I went to ANZ to enquire about their exchange rate. They quoted 91.880 yen to the dollar – about 6 yen below the “official” rate + an $8 transaction (aka highway robbery) fee. I turned around and walked out while the tellar was still mid-sentence.
Baba had a colleague who used to work at a foreign exchange/investment joint called KVB in the Citibank building on Park St. I went there, fought my way past an over zealous security guard at the lifts and went up to level 18. Right next to KVB is a dodgy looking Chinese FX company/Bank or something. I can’t remember their name and because their computer sstem was down, I didn’t get a proper receipt. I was Just two people sitting at a plain, unadorned counter. Long story short, despite th girl’s absolute ineptitude and incompetence, and tendency to count money a dozen times before handing it over (all 6 notes that is…), I bought my yen at a rate of 95.25 – more than 3 yen to the dollar more than ANZ, and without commission. I only changed 60 000 yen ($630), but on that transaction I was close to ¥5000 yen better off. Bloody evil banks!!!! No wonder they have annual profits counted in the Squillions of dollars!
I was already in a grumpy mood with banks. It all started last week when Westpac sent me a letter to say that my credit cards with them had been cancelled due to an “undisclosed potential security breach” or some such rubbish. As instructed, i rang them up, waited on hold long enough for 70% of my hair to go grey, spoke to a spotty-faced 19 year old (I’m assuming he was 19 and had spots on his face…), gave him all my personal details (god…he didn’t even know me. Date of birth, pet’s name, mother’s maiden name and all the rest of that stuff shouldn’t come up until at least the third or fourth date in my old fashioned view on such things). He then told me I could keep using the old cards, and that new ones would arrive in the post “some time next week”. As I’m off to Tokyo on Tuesday, I was rather hoping for some kind of assurance that I’d have new cards by a certain date. Naturally Spotty’s reassurances were anything but. I actually rang Westpac back the following day, just to make sure I hadn’t been swindled by a more sophisticated version of one of those dodgy scams doing the rounds by email. Thankfully, they told me that it wasn’t a scam and that I should in fact cut up my old cards because they’d been cancelled. (told you Spotty’s reassurances meant nothing!
Thankfully on Thursday there were two letters from the bank waiting for me when I got home. One contained one of my new credit cards (the Amex half of the Amex/Mastercard “earth” card package – good cards btw…) and a second letter telling me to go to the Randwick branch the to collect my cards. I fronted up to Randwick on Friday and spoke to a sickenly cheerful girl from New Zealand, who produced not just the one card I was still waiting to receive…but two!!!! Not only had they cancelled my old cards, deleted all my transaction history from my online banking page, wanted to charge me $90 to print and post the equivalent info in paper statements (later done for free after a few grumpy words to a slightly more senior member of staff) but they also fucked up by sending a replacement for one of my old cards, as well as two cards with entirely new numbers on them. I haven’t had an opportunity to try the cards yet, hope they work!!!
