While Lesley’s studying at an ashram in India, her husband Crayton is guest-posting. Please be kind to him.
I had to go to the bank today.
Readers who have lived in Mexico just experienced an involuntary shudder of dread. It’s never fun to go to the bank, anywhere, but Mexico’s obsession with paperwork makes the experience downright hellish here.
And the thing is, my bank is actually relatively good! It’s one of the smaller ones, so there aren’t huge lines at the local branch, the people are pretty friendly, and the branch manager saw Lesley’s name on one of my forms and asked if a previous problem she had was resolved, which is like the closest I’ve ever gotten to a Jimmy Stewart, Wonderful Life-style banking experience.
(One downside of having a smaller Mexican bank: It’s harder to deliver money to anyone else. Most services in Mexico, from the electric company to a cooking class, require you to transfer money directly from your account to theirs to make a payment. This can be done through an interbank account number known as a CLABE, but for some reason, instead of just noting what their CLABE is, a lot of services will just provide a list of their account numbers at the nation’s largest banks. So for a fictional example, if I’m a client of Banco Gigante, I just look for the power company’s Banco Gigante account number on my bill and pay accordingly. It’s an intrabank transfer from one account to the other, and Banco Gigante can handle it. But if I’m a client of little Banco Chiquito, the power company probably doesn’t have a Banco Chiquito account, so I have to call the power company and ask what their Banco Gigante CLABE is before I can pay. It’s a big pain.
“Why don’t you just write a check?” you ask. HA! Checks technically exist here, but I have never seen them used. People don’t even write checks to family members. They just do bank transfers. Assuming they can figure out each other’s CLABEs. Anyway. Is this practice normal in other countries? I only know the American way, which is that we write checks, and when you get a check you assume it will clear. (Or maybe now you use Paypal, I guess.) That’s just how it’s done. But maybe the U.S. is an aberration? I do remember in India, our friend Vikas attempted to pay for a hotel with an advance bank transfer, but it didn’t go through and he ended up having to pay in cash. So there’s that.)
Even the good banks can’t get around that insatiable Mexican need, in government and in business, for clients to produce documents proving every detail of their lives. The phone bill is proof of residence, but the cable bill won’t suffice, unless you get digital phone service through your cable provider, I learned today. I also did not have an acceptable visa, not because my visa isn’t legit, but because they just don’t encounter visas like it very often. But they decided they could make an exception for me. Thanks, guys.
Once my transaction was approved in principle, the mounds of paperwork began. Banks like for you to sign, not just initial, every page of a contract. Including the copies you’ll be keeping yourself. They also like for your signatures to match as closely as possible, and they will scrutinize your handwriting like fortune-tellers to divine whether you are the same person who just signed that other page five seconds ago. (Actually the worst experience I had like that was in the tax office, where the clerk kept made me re-sign my name about five times to get my signature matching perfectly with the one in my visa.)
It took three hours to get my business done. On the plus side, they gave me free coffee.
You are indeed very brave to go to the bank. Luckily we do not have a bank account down here. The closest I have come to this level of annoyance is any interaction with Cablevisión.
Traditionally those have ended with me a) almost in tears on the phone, b) cursing like a sailor as I walk out of their office w/my mission unfulfilled, or c) responding to the cable installation guy’s request by offering him a choice between a bottle of olive oil & a bottle of shampoo and wondering if installing cables marinated in olive oil into our walls is really the best solution they’ve ID’d here.
one min still laughing…
Seriously about the signing Ill never understand this. We were once turned down by a bank because my signatures were not all exactly like my signature on my passport that I had signed 6 years before. Some were the same but not all 20 of them so they said it wasn’t legit and refused to cash our travelers checks for us.
Don’t get me started with banks…
Saludos,
Don Cuevas
We I signed my fidecomiso, 2 attorneys, a RE agent and the notario all sat around for 5 minutes while I practiced my signature – at their insistence. I refuse to deal with banks here.