Last week, with a lot of help from Tommy, I requested a wire transfer from my Bank of America account to my Barclays account. The removal of that money from my Bank of America account was immediate. The deposit into my Barclays account has not been. It's funny how efficient they are at taking my money away versus giving it to me. It's in electronic limbo. Yesterday, I received an email from Bank of America saying that I needed to call them to give additional information regarding my wire transfer. If I didn't contact them within 2 days, the wire transfer would be canceled, and they would "buy back" the currency they'd already converted to pounds. The kicker is that they don't give me a stellar rate of exchange. They convert my dollars to pounds at a rate of 1.6 dollars per pound, but they'd "buy back" the currency at a rate of 1.5 dollars per pound. Since I am transferring half of my savings overseas, this would end up costing me about $440, plus the $35 they already charged me as a wire transfer fee. The fact that they are allowed to give horrible rates of exchange in addition to charging fees should be illegal. But, that's something to ponder at a later date. Right now, they demanded I contact them.
Luckily, Tommy is an awesome brother who happened to be working from home. So, we arranged to talk over Skype while he called this 800 number (which is not free for me from overseas). We were on hold for about 15 minutes, so this really saved me money. Plus, we got to chat for 15 minutes. When someone answered the call, he was at first hesitant to deal with Tommy, since he was not the account holder. However, I realized that I could hear the call just fine over Skype, and the guy could hear me just fine, so we sorted out the info right there. It was a great way to avoid international fees, and the call was quite clear. The man asked me to give him information that I am 100% certain I already put into the transfer request, but whatever, now he had it. Then, he says he needs the information emailed to him. Yes, the information I just gave to him would not be official until I emailed him. He also wanted me to include my phone number in the UK on the email.
To sum up, Bank of America emailed me that I had to call them, and when I called them I was told I had to email them information or it wouldn't be official. Plus, they said to email them my phone number in the UK so they could call to verify the information once they got it.
I sent the email. I received a call to verify.
The complexity and redundancy of this system is matched by its expense and inconvenience.
Bank of America is a big company. They have to deal with customers that get transferred overseas temporarily, whether for corporate, military, or government jobs and want to keep their accounts open. Do they really have no set procedure for keeping these customers? The whole point of dealing with Bank of America is the convenience that comes from their size. Do rich people have to deal with this? How do people have money all over the world and actually access it?
There are many multinational corporations, but no multinational banks as far as I know. Interstate banking was a big deal when it came about in the US. International banking is a more difficult proposition (currency and laws are different), but I can't imagine it's impossible. Until that beast is born, though, I'll have to figure out how to streamline this transfer process.
No comments:
Post a Comment