Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Adventures in Banking Part the Second

We all know that Citibank is awful, right? I didn't need more proof myself, but they happily provided it. Suffice to say that even the lovely Citibank office down in Ginza couldn't help me turn my card on. They helpfully suggested that I could get a cash advance at any bank in Tokyo by providing two forms of ID with the card. Quite friendly. Entirely untrue, but friendly nonetheless. Another option they suggested was to mail me a card (dispite them having yet to prove they can mail anything to me over here) on which I could write down my favorite numbers, send back in to them and they would magically turn those numbers into a PIN for my card. They said that it would only take two weeks after they recieved the card back from me to get it activated. By which time I would no doubt be back in the US. Still, neat trick though.

Oh, and my bank card locked up on me too. I wonder where one goes to apply for a Japanese sugar mama?

3 comments:

jayfish said...

eek! how do we go about getting you some yen??

Overread said...

whew! Washington Mutual wins a point for unlocking the bank card quickly. Hooray for money! Pity it happened after dinner. I already had a cheap bowl of ramen at the ramen bar. No room for a celebratory feast of gyoza - hehe. Thanks for the offer tho Mr Fish :)

Ianqui said...

Yeah, Citibank in Spain wasn't so great either. There was no way for me to take money out of the bank, even though it's my bank--that is, I could only use my ATM card. This was fine, except for when my card was eaten by the machine because I didn't pull it out fast enough. And then they wouldn't give me money at the teller, even though they're my own bank. Weird.