Down the Rabbit Hole (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love French Banking)

A Guest Blog By Nate

Ok, so I realize that Jess has previously touched on the banking “issue” in this blog. However, I never felt that her treatment of the subject achieved the proper mixture of outrage and loathing that it should have. Plus, I’ve had all new experiences at the bank in the past few days which has reinforced my conviction, formed slowly over the past few months, that the Official Position of Banks in France (yes, caps intended) is that they would much rather you didn’t bother them with, say, banking, since that would require the bank staff to engage in, you know, work and thinking and other icky stuff best left to those crazy workaholic Anglo Saxons.

Also, being that Jess is back in the States visiting family, she’s not really here right now to defend herself and her blog from my angry rant. Ha! Oh and by the way, the title of the post is just for humorous effect and because I couldn’t resist the reference. I hate French banking. Deeply.

So perhaps in order to more fully understand what it is I dislike about the French banking system, I should start by explaining my expectations about banking. When I go to the bank during business hours, I expect to be able to do things such as deposit and withdraw money, and speak with a banker about my account. Let’s call these two things Core Banking Activities, since for a consumer banking experience I feel I can safely conclude that a majority of everyday banking transactions falls under one of these categories. Reasonable, right? Wrong! At least in France.

Before I get into the everyday banking experience in France, I should probably back up and explain the central paradox of French banking, which we ran into as soon as we arrived in the country. You see, in order to rent an apartment in France, landlords expect that you will provide them with all kinds of guarantees that you’re not a deadbeat, including identification, recent paystubs (to make sure you earn enough to pay the rent), financial guarantees from other individuals/companies (to make sure that if, for some reason you can’t pay the rent, possibly due to excessive fois gras consumption, someone else can), and yes, your bank account information. Unfortunately – and here’s the fun part – in order to open a bank account, the bank expects you to provide a proof of residence – a utility bill or signed lease for example. So what this amounts to is a situation where you can’t open a bank account without a place to live, but you can’t rent a place to live without a bank account. Neat how that works, eh?

Getting back to my expectations, my years of banking in the U.S. has lead me to believe that banks, in a highly competitive market, will vie for my business by offering such perks as free checking, a free credit card, a toaster, whatever. Most U.S. consumers have multiple credit cards and often the motivation to use a particular card is driven by what points a card awards with purchases, such as airline miles. With that in mind I was shocked to learn that French consumers basically don’t have credit cards readily available, and not only would my debit card not be free – I’m paying $15 a month for the privilege of retrieving MY OWN MONEY from the ATM. As if that weren't enough, there’s a limit to how much of my own money I can spend on this card per month!! I’m not even talking about a per-transaction limit or U.S.-style ATM withdrawal limit here – there’s simply a monthly cap and you can’t spend more of your own money than that using the card, although I’m told you can upgrade to a more expensive card that allows you to access more of your own money, but there’s still a limit. And we’re not talking credit-card style limits of $15,000 or more – the limit for me seems to be around 2,000 Euros. On top of all that, our banker looked at me like I was crazy when I asked to have a duplicate card for Jess, so we can both access the account. Even when you’re paying $15 a month, they don’t do that here apparently. Huh?

Depositing cash has become an important activity for Jess and I since unfortunately, we’ve discovered that the most efficient way to transfer money from a U.S. bank account to here is to withdraw from the ATM and then deposit the cash. If anyone reading this knows of a better solution let me know, but I’ve looked at everything I can think of and this seems to be the best solution. So when our bank representative, an odd, bespectacled woman whose wardrobe is limited to black and white, told us that the branch is open on Saturdays, Jess and I were delighted since the bank opens after I go to work and closes before I get home. Thus, we were more than surprised when we visited the bank to make a deposit on a Satuday not long after that they don’t actually accept deposits on Saturday. Again, huh? Isn’t this what a bank does? Why bother being open? I was feeling a little sneaky when I discovered a branch of my bank near my office, but when I headed in to make the deposit there, during my lunch break, I was told that – get this – they don’t handle cash AT ALL.

After a few weeks of having the account solely in my name, Jess and I started running into issues since Jess was unable to make deposits. We wanted to create a joint account from the beginning but were told that until Jess had her official residency card, the infamous titre de sejour, it would not be possible for her to be on the account or have her own account. This in itself led to another quirky situation – Jess was allowed on one occasion to deposit money into the account, but not on another. Hello inconsistent application of the rules! Anyway, we eventually found out that there existed a way to allow Jess to perform operations on the account without her name being on the account. Great! “Where do we sign up?”, we asked. Stupid us, we had made the mistake of assuming that we could be assisted in this process by any bank representative. Nope. Only *our* bank representative could assist us in this. Come back later, sorry. Sigh.

Ok, this is getting long (and there’s SO much more to tell), but in the interest of brevity I’ll tell one more piece of the story. It turns out that Jess really needs to get her name on the account after all, in order to secure a needed piece of government documentation (the carte vitale). So on a recent visit to the bank we asked again about this and, after a few calls to more senior bank officials we were told by our monochromatic bank rep that we could in fact get Jess listed on the account with Jess’s temporary titre de sejour. Great news, sign us up! Seven forms, fourteen signatures, and one hour later (I shit you not), this simple procedure was executed and off we went. A few weeks later, when rent was due, I logged on to our bank’s website and executed a wire transfer to our landlord, as I have done many times in the past. Everything appeared to go smoothly and the requested transfer showed up, as normal, on the “account history” page. A few days later I noticed that the money was still in my account – it had not been debited. I called my bank’s customer service number – an action whose cost the consumer is expected to bear, and it’s not cheap. Quick aside – France’s companies universally charge consumers by the minute for calls to customer service, constituting a diabolical, anti-consumer stance that is unthinkable in the U.S. Anyway, after spending about 30 minutes and over $5 talking to three different bank representatives I had no explanation for the malfunctioning of the wire transfer. I was advised to simply try the transfer again, but was given no guarantee that I wouldn’t be debited twice, incurring overdraft charges if it happened. However, I was promised that technical support would work on it and give me a call back. It’s been over four days now, and I’m not holding my breath for a call back. Instead, I took matters into my own hands and made no less than three trips to the bank over two days to resolve this issue. I actually did end up trying the transfer again via the bank’s website, only to be told there wasn’t enough money in the account for the transfer to go through (there was, and bank’s site even said so).

As it turns out, when we transformed the account into a joint account, Jess’s temporary status put our account back into a state of “unverifiedness” which prevents wire transfers from happening without special authorization, requiring a visit to the bank every time. Given that Jess is still months away from obtaining her official residency card, we are now left with the unsavory prospect of making monthly visits to the bank to authorize special wire transfers. Of course, they didn’t mention this when we made the account a joint account, and god forbid the bank’s website, their customer service reps, or anyone at the bank provide helpful information about why the operation failed in the first place without three visits and an expensive call to customer support. I think a nice error message when I first attempted the wire transfer would have done nicely.

Ok I’m done.