Keeping in mind that as far as I know things may have changed since I last lived in the USA there is one thing that was a constant thorn in my side when I did live there and that was interactions with any bank that I was ever a member of. Note that I say “member” because of the fact that I never really felt like a customer nor did I ever feel appreciated.
When I arrived in Asia in 2004 it was in Thailand. I bought a one-way ticket and even though I wasn’t really entirely sure what I was going to do with my life over there I knew that I had saved up enough money by living frugally in my professional life in the States to have quite a while to figure it out.
There was the issue of getting money over to Thailand from the USA and it hadn’t really occurred to me how crazy expensive each transaction was going to be. Certain ATM’s over in Thailand at the time would charge crazy ATM fees but these were all in tourist areas. All you had to do was get on your bike and go to the non-tourist part of town and all of a sudden these fees went from being crazy to being something along the lines of 50 cents or in one branch’s situation, nothing at all. However, Bank of America, which to this day I consider to be one of the most evil corporations in the world, had other plans for me.
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Of course they didn’t alert me of this, but they were charging me $10 per ATM withdrawal and also screwing me on the currency conversion. This would later lead to a massive class-action lawsuit against Bank of America that I was a net recipient of some of the settlement. BOA started playing fair from that point forward but the audacity of them to even try to do something like that was just awful and I later closed my account and went with a credit union from that point forward.
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The banks in Thailand are very different. For one thing, they are staffed with a ton of people and if the wait is too long, they offer refreshments to the people who are there. There is also a line system from a machine that spits out numbers so that you don’t have to wait in line like cattle waiting for their chance at the feed trough. You just sit in your seat until you number is called and it tells you what window to go to. Again, the terrible system that existed in USA may have changed and for the love of everything that is good in this world I certainly hope that it has. Before I left I remember BOA was attempting to enact a fee if you spoke to a human teller in their banks more that a few times a month, so I doubt they have done much to improve this….because they are evil.
Also, one thing that existed since day one and has only been improving ever since I arrived in that country is that you can do almost anything from the ATM machines. You can deposit money, withdraw money, transfer money to any other account inside the bank, transfer money to any other bank account with another bank in the country, pay any of your bills with a bar-code scanner, and even sign up for online service right there at a machine that has already been programmed in 4 different languages.
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This meant that I didn’t have to run all over town in order to pay electric, water, cable, internet, or could loan or borrow money from friends without ever even seeing them. If you live in the USA you would probably think that the bank would charge you $5 or something every time that you used this service but no, that was not the case. There were service charges for this but it was something crazy low like 20 cents. The gasoline that would be required for me to drive to the electric office to pay my bill in person would cost more than this.
I recall ATM’s being a relative nightmare when I was in USA, but I had no idea that there was any other way. The banks in the states seemed to be looking for more and more ways to screw you out of money when I lived there at one point I had a checking account (again, with BOA) that would charge me a fee if my balance was too low. So you are going to charge me money for being poor? Where is the logic / fairness in this?
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The banking system in Thailand and also now in Vietnam is a, dare I say, a wonderful experience and as far as customer retention is concerned I can honestly say that I have never been anything but completely satisfied with all 4 of the banks that I have been involved with since moving here.
The people are kind and efficient, there are plenty of staff at every location, and you can do just about anything with the ATM machines. I am sure they are still making plenty of money as well because they have locations all over the damn place, just like you would expect.
So in summary, this is just another reason why I am happy that I decided to move away from the United States back in the early 2000’s and when I look in my rear view mirror, I truly have no ragrets.
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Oh and by the way, Bank of America sucks and if you are still with them, find a way out. Get into a credit union where at least they have the decency to pretend to give a damn about you.