Well lets see, it was the Tuesday after a long weekend. There were 4 cruise ships in town. I have not been on island for over a month and I had 3 banks to go to. How do you think town day went???
I could probably stop writing right here couldn't I !
I am not the brightest person around. We only ever had a business account here at Barclays, until a few years ago when they had strikes and nonsense, at which time, we opened an account at Scotia Bank, jumping through all the hoops around. Barclays and First Caribbean offered us "pass through" checks on an american bank, which meant that we had a US Bank account in the US system as well, which we needed for unimportant things like paying the mortgage on the boat, and paying people in the states as they would laugh like crazy when you tried to give them a Tortola check!
Then, First Caribbean dropped this service, so we had no corporate US check system. I received a couple packages from banks in the states, but thought it would be just as easy to go to Banco Popular here, as they were in the US banking system, and hey, I have seen the TV commercials! It seemed easy and would give me internet banking etc. For those who follow my blog you would know that doing anything to avoid standing in line ups all day is a good thing!
I did go into Banco Popular here, you know the place, the one with customers standing out the doors, hanging from the rafters etc etc?? Took me about half an hour to realize that I had to put my name down on a piece of paper to see customer service, which I finally did, to wait a long time to see a rep for 3 minutes who sent me away hat in hand, head down, with a list of all the documents that i needed to have.
So, I was sure I had them beat and went in today, waiting my turn to see a customer service rep. Now, customer service rep was not really the right word for it, and yes, I did all the pleasantries, good morning, etc etc.
I think it is a game where they are trying to send you away to get something else, and cannot really be bothered to give you the time of day. We had mild disagreements back and forth about every piece of paper I passed over the deck, such as NO hard copy for the trade license, even though I explained that boats are different. The supervisor came in several times. I do not believe that rep gave me one piece of information that i did not specifically ask for. There was none of this "Welcome, nice to have you as customer, let me help you stuff here, no sirree!"
We wrestled for a couple hours in there, she must have left the cubicle about 30 times to either work on someone else, talk to someone, and I don't know what all, but there was not one "excuse me"
I said I wanted to put my husband on the account and he would come in later to sign, but no, no way, they would not even open the account unless he was sitting there. I wonder what happens when you try and put someone on the account later on. They were not there at the initial interview were they?
They had some kind of investment, savings commercial loan thing but the girl told her supervisor that "she would have to talk to us about that as she knew nothing about it" Thats ok, once the lady left, I still knew nothing about it other then it was optional and it was like a company loan. I could decline that as we did not want a company loan!
At the end of it, she said "you're done" and gave me a couple pieces of paper in an envelope. I did not think I was done, I had no idea whether I had gotten a checking account, saving account, what the number even was or anything. Bear in mind that I thought I wanted ATM cards, merchant services, internet banking, you know, most of the normal things you get with a bank account nowadays.
So after several hours, I left Banco popular with a book of starter checks and the following:
1) a phone number to call the woman on St Thomas to make an appointment so she could come see us next time she came over to Tortola to set up internet banking. (???) Doesn't this really take the concept of "internet banking" back to the level of "waiting in line for a teller"
2) a phone number for Banco Popular in Puerto Rico so we could get ATM cards as "they do not do company ones on island, you have to call Puerto Rico"
3) I was told to go upstairs to see someone about merchant card services, when I got up there, I was told that he was never in, and I left with another phone number to call him to have him come out to set up merchant services.
Whatever happened to one stop shopping??
I called the woman on St Thomas and all I got was a busy signal for hours on end.
I called the number in Puerto Rico and it just rang and rang and when it did go onto a recording it was in spanish, not my best conversing language unless I am saying "dos cervezas por favor"
I called the guy for merchant services, and I got him but he must have been eating lunch, as I really could not understand him. He wanted to come out and set up my merchant services, I told him that was kind of hard as it was a boat. he told me I needed a phone line for the merchant services. I sighed and knew i was in trouble. I already have a merchant services machine that if I want to key in a credit card I have to take to shore and find a phone line to plug in and then the bank charges me something ridiculous like 5% for a manual entry. It is why I usually use PAYPAL for my credit card services. I was hoping that maybe in the last 8 years things had moved on to like, oh, I don't know, like online merchant services or something.
After explaining to him that I knew all this stuff about phone lines and what I did, he said I wanted a virtual terminal, but they did not have those here yet either. BUT there was hope in the future for those as the TAXI drivers wanted them (surprised they are not here then if they want them!) I explained that the virtual terminal was still not going to do me a lot of good as it was maybe only once a week at the end of charter that someone was here and used the card, the rest of the time I did not have the card in hand. (Note to all potential guests, please put your credit card in a fedex envelope and mail to me so I have it in hand!) he told me that if I did not have the card in hand it was going to cost me more and I should really only do it from "people I Knew". Sigh again.
You can see where I am going with my frustration level in hand here. I think I will quit now, you get the idea!!
SOMEWHERE, somehow, I must have a former guest that WORKS FOR a bank or online credit card service that I can set up my non american company with and run the large amounts on credit cards I get on line without it costing me 4-5%!!! Now you know why I offer a discount to my guests who DO NOT use credit cards when booking a charter. It just seems so difficult. I now have 3 business accounts and will probably end up having to get more copies of references and incorporation papers so I can take up to the states to get the things I think should be pretty easy.
Then just to cap off my evening, I am getting my husbands flu, and i have already had two bouts this winter, and I spent about 4 hours scanning things into the computer that I picked up around places today to put on my sites. Always amazes me how you can find all this info in PAPER but they do not make it available on the web! I have some good stuff though if I ever get it up!
