When the Mexican bank takes two months to give you a debit card

Crayton and I have both talked about the unique system of banking in Mexico.

Probably the biggest issue I’ve had to accept is that joint checking accounts don’t exist within our Mexican bank. There is one “titular,” or main name on the account, and a “co-titular,” or another person who has access but not complete control.

In our case, Crayton is the titular and I’m the co. This means I need his signature a lot.

It didn’t really bother me much until I came back from India. While I was gone, Crayton had canceled our old bank account and opened up a new one without me. (This was due to various only-in-Mexico reasons that I won’t go into here.) The point was: The bank now had no record of my existence. I had to get myself added to the account, and then solicit a new debit card.

So I signed a bunch of forms, and Crayton signed a bunch of forms saying, “Yes, I allow my wife to have access to my account, and to receive a debit card.” We waited. Three weeks passed. While we were on vacation in March in Arizona, the bank called and said oops, you need to sign just one more form.

We came back from Arizona and I signed the form, and Crayton signed the form that allowed me to sign it.

We waited some more. About 2 1/2 weeks later, already a month after I’d requested the original card, I came home and the doorman stopped me. “This is for you,” he said.

He handed me a tiny sticky note. A phone number for a man named Jorge was scribbled on it, along with the words “Ixe.” Ixe is the name of our bank. (If you’re unsure about why random sticky notes make sense in Mexico, please read my short treatise on scratch paper.)

I wasn’t sure what to do with the number. Should I call this Jorge person? While I mulled it over, the phone rang.

“I have your debit card,” a male voice said. Presumably this was Jorge.

“Are you with the bank?” I asked. (Just to make sure, you know, that he wasn’t some other random guy who intercepted the real dude who’d been carrying my bank card.)

“No, soy de [unintelligible, rapid-fire Spanish].”

I tried asking him again and got more rapid-fire Spanish, so then I gave up. He was not with the bank.

“I have your debit card,” he repeated again.

Even though this whole thing felt weird, because I wasn’t entirely sure who this man was, we agreed that he’d drop off the card the next day, Friday, between noon and 3. I put the appointment on my Google calendar.

The next day, my Google alert chimed but Jorge never showed up. By Tuesday there was still no sign of him.

On Tuesday afternoon, I called my bank to find out what happened. The woman who answered the phone said she would gladly get that information for me.

“What is your NIP telefónica?” she asked.

My what?

“Your NIP telefónica, señora. It came with your card. Está en un papel calco.”

“Papel calco” means carbon paper. I suddenly remembered that with our last account, we had received a six-digit number on carbon paper and we needed it to access any type of account information. This was our bank’s way of being extra secure. They would say: “Please refer to your carbon paper and tell me the third and sixth digit that is printed there.”

Heaven forbid robbers should break into your house and steal your carbon paper, because you would really be screwed. We had the next worst scenario: the paper was somewhere in the house, but neither Crayton nor I had any idea where.

I tried to plead with the customer service lady — “I’m not seeking any personal account information, I just want to know where my card is” — but she brushed me off, politely.

Crayton and I looked for the NIP telefónica for a week. We eventually found it stuck to the very bottom of our file basket. Finally, paper in hand, I called the bank and repeated the special number.

So where was my card?

They had no idea. They likewise had no clue who Jorge was, but they would happily send the card again, this time to my local branch. It would arrive by the end of the week.

Given Ixe’s reputation for timeliness, I waited one more week to call my local branch. By now, I was pretty sick of having to ask Crayton for money every time I wanted to leave the house. ( Again — this whole not-having-a-debit-card thing has happened before.) Of course he didn’t mind, but it didn’t do much for my dignity as a stay-at-home wife.

When I called my branch to inquire about the card, though, I didn’t get an answer right away.

The first question they asked me was: “Who is your ejecutivo?”

“Ejecutivo” means the bank employee who opened our account. In our case it’s JC Gómez. (Yes, I have memorized his name. Really not looking forward to the day that JC dies and we’re forced to wander leaderless through the Mexican banking system.)

The thing is, JC is often not at the office. But really — couldn’t this person who answered the phone just check the mail and see if my card was there?

I told him, as politely as I could: “Nada más quiero saber dónde está mi tarjeta!” (I just want to know where my card is!)

“Permíteme,” he said, which is the Spanish equivalent for, please hold on for an undetermined amount of time.

A few minutes later, he came back on the line. “I’m sorry, your card hasn’t arrived,” he said. “You should really call the main number.”

And that’s when I exploded. I yelled about how my card had disappeared, how it was the bank’s fault, and how the bank employees had to be incompetent if they couldn’t even deliver me a debit card. I bemoaned the fact that I could not get money out of my account — er, rather, my husband’s account, of which I was the co-titular. And then I thought to myself: Does no one care about this because I’m the co-titular? Or is it really because I’m a woman and the titular’s wife?

“Who is your ejecutivo?” he asked again.

In my head, my little bank card floated away on mini angel-wings. Dead before it was even activated.

“JC Gómez.”

“Oh, he’s not here. Shall I let him know you called?”

Just when I was about to say something very snippy, to show him what really happens when you upset an independent American woman, the man said, “Mr. Gómez just arrived. I’ll pass you to him.”

JC was cheery.

“Good morning Sra. Lesley! How are you?”

“I’m not good, JC.”

“Really, what’s happened?”

“I don’t have my debit card.” When he didn’t say anything, I launched into my customer service tirade again.

“Oh.” He sounded like I just told him it would rain that day.

“I can’t take out cash from the ATM,” I told him, hoping to convey the seriousness of the matter. “I need my debit card.”

He paused. “But aren’t you on your husband’s account?”

[Pause here to scream, pull hair out.]

I told him again that I’d been waiting for nearly two months.

“Permíteme,” he said.

A few minutes later, he was back. “You will have your debit card in two days. I’ll call you when it arrives.”

Four days later Crayton called to check in. Good news: my card had arrived.

With my papel calco and NIP telefónica clutched firmly in hand, I called to activate it. The banking representative who answered the phone said, “Do you have your NIP de la cuenta?”

NIP de la cuenta? What NIP de la cuenta?

“Is it on a papel calco?” I asked.

“No, it’s a different one,” the lady told me.

I wanted to cry. “I don’t have it.” I silently cursed the gods, again, for allowing Crayton to open this account without me, and for insisting that we keep copious amounts of carbon paper and random numbers and who-knows-what-else in this information age. I know that’s not fair but I was angry.

“Can’t we activate my card another way?”

“No, I’m sorry señorita.”

I was about to say fine and hang up, but then she said, “Wait, is there another name on the account?”

I told her Crayton’s name. Not surprisingly, it worked — I accessed the account and activated the card. Finally, finally, after two months, I would be able to retrieve money from the ATM and pay for things on my own. Or wait — would I really? What if there was some other problem looming ahead? It was entirely possible in this crazy Mexican banking mundo that the bank had somehow switched cards, or this mysterious Jorge had, and there were now two debit cards with my name on them. Maybe the card I had in my hand was not the card that was being activated.

Before I hung up, the bank representative gave me a helpful piece of advice: “In the future, when you want to access this account, just give your husband’s name instead of your own.”

I told her I would. Then, shortly afterward, I went to the ATM for the first time since before I left for India.

I held my breath as I typed in my PIN and punched button for “checking account.” The machine hummed and rattled a little. And then it spit out my cash: my cash, for the first time in a long time. I don’t recall exactly what I bought with the money, but I’m pretty sure it included groceries and a six-class card at my local gym.

UPDATE: I’m amazed at the power of the Internet. This morning, just two days after I wrote this post, a very nice man from Ixe just called and said someone passed him “algunos comentarios” I’d made about the bank’s customer service. He offered to help and asked if I had any outstanding concerns. I told him no, everything has been fine since I got my debit card — and that actually, I was thinking about opening a future account with Ixe because (although it may take awhile to get a debit card) the bank never has long lines. He gave me his phone number and told me to call if anything comes up in the future.

Wow. Just wow.