French banking
So, my French bank account with BNP Paribas has finally come close to running out of money, meaning I'd have to transfer some money from the US. I've been fed up with BNP's service, especially its non-management of its online services (online bank statements have been broken for me since the second month they were implemented), and Christian's bank LCL seems to have a far, far better concept of service and website management. So I decided I'd just take this opportunity to create a new bank account at LCL and close my BNP one. We set up an appointment three weeks ago, created the new account without too much difficulty, and set things in motion. I asked about transfering my automatic bill-pay for our internet/phone service from the BNP account to the LCL account, but our LCL representative said we had to wait until the account creation was processed. So I waited until I got my first bank statement in the mail. I went ahead with the transfer from the US, which went through fine, so now I had the money in France to pay our internet/phone bills from the new account.
I then called up our rep to set up an appointment about the automatic bill-pay, because it was very urgent since I only had enough money left at BNP to pay one more bill. She said LCL has a special service that takes care of this, so on our next appointment with her we can take care of it. She was busy through the end of that week and the whole next one, so I made the appointment for this past Monday. We go in and ask about the automatic bill-pay, and she says that it's not something that happens physically at the bank: we have to schedule a phone appointment with the service! Argggh. Why didn't she tell me that a week and a half earlier, so I could have scheduled it then and talked with the phone service during that week she was busy? She apparently isn't involved in this step at all, except to schedule the phone meeting. So the phone meeting was this morning, they didn't request all the data I was told they needed, and they said that our internet/phone company had up to 45 days to process the change, "so don't close your BNP account because there still make be an automatic bill payment that comes out of it." Argghh!!!!! The most recent bill was just deducted yesterday, so I don't have the money in the BNP account to pay for the June bill. On top of that, I was totally ready to go to BNP this afternoon and schedule an appointment to close my account there. Now I don't even know if I'll be able to take care of this banking crap before I leave for the summer in mid-June! I may even have to write myself a check from the LCL account to the BNP one to cover the next bill. It should not take two months to do this!!! Fucking French bureaucracy.
I then called up our rep to set up an appointment about the automatic bill-pay, because it was very urgent since I only had enough money left at BNP to pay one more bill. She said LCL has a special service that takes care of this, so on our next appointment with her we can take care of it. She was busy through the end of that week and the whole next one, so I made the appointment for this past Monday. We go in and ask about the automatic bill-pay, and she says that it's not something that happens physically at the bank: we have to schedule a phone appointment with the service! Argggh. Why didn't she tell me that a week and a half earlier, so I could have scheduled it then and talked with the phone service during that week she was busy? She apparently isn't involved in this step at all, except to schedule the phone meeting. So the phone meeting was this morning, they didn't request all the data I was told they needed, and they said that our internet/phone company had up to 45 days to process the change, "so don't close your BNP account because there still make be an automatic bill payment that comes out of it." Argghh!!!!! The most recent bill was just deducted yesterday, so I don't have the money in the BNP account to pay for the June bill. On top of that, I was totally ready to go to BNP this afternoon and schedule an appointment to close my account there. Now I don't even know if I'll be able to take care of this banking crap before I leave for the summer in mid-June! I may even have to write myself a check from the LCL account to the BNP one to cover the next bill. It should not take two months to do this!!! Fucking French bureaucracy.