Ordinary Gweilo

Living in Hong Kong and dealing with organizations based overseas can be very frustrating. For example, try filling in registration forms on the Internet. For one thing, they usually insist on a Zip or Post Code even though not every country has them. What’s worse is that they sometimes use this information later to find your records, so I have to guess what I entered (normally "NT" or ‘-"). Makes sense in most countries because people will know their own postcode or zipcode, but not in Hong Kong and a few other places.

Then I wanted my bank in the UK to transfer some money to my Hong Kong bank account. In the past they have done this with no problem based on a letter from me, but not this time. Each time they came up with a problem or needed more information I had to post a letter to them, which took about a week to arrive. Phones, fax and email are apparently not sufficiently secure.

First they wanted to know the address of the branch (in Hong Kong) where I bank, and didn’t seem at all convinced when I told them that all international transfers go through the main branch in Central. It’s always been this way as far as I know, and UK banks must transfer money to Hong Kong fairly regularly.

They also expect the branch to have a "sort code", which in the UK identifies the bank and branch, but which is not used in Hong Kong – the account number is unique for the bank, across all branches. That’s the advantage of Hong Kong being a relatively small place, but this confused the clerk in London who expected things to be the same as the UK.

Then they complained because my signature had changed compared to the one in their records. They invited me to go to my nearest branch and give them a new sample of my signature, but obviously that wasn’t very practical. My suggestion that perhaps they could look at my signature on recent letters or cheques didn’t seem to go down very well. I can’t remember how this got resolved – perhaps I just shouted at the guy and told him to stop being stupid.

So they finally passed the transfer request to their "international section" but couldn’t guarantee that they would be willing to transfer my money to my account in Hong Kong. They phoned me up a few days later and asked me a few questions – no, not general knowledge but about me. The problem came when they asked me for the name of my employer, because I had no idea when they had last updated their records. I guessed and got it wrong, and the lady seemed quite disappointed. However, after I had gone through my employment history she seemed satisfied (it turned out that their records were updated in 1996 or 1997). And they finally sent me the money.

No common sense, banks. A long time ago, I opened a savings account with a bank in Guernsey (Channel Islands) because the interest rate was high. I stopped using the account about ten years ago, but they have been sending me statements ever since, showing my credit balance of 67p (HK$5). Then a few months ago they wrote to me to say that as part of the attempts to prevent money laundering they needed to check my identity. Needless to say, I wrote to them suggesting that the best thing to do would be close the account, and that I was amazed they hadn’t suggested it. I don’t like to think how much it has cost them in postage and administration to look after this trifling sum on my behalf!