Friday, July 13, 2007

Bank Horror Stories

Where have I been lately?

Welp, Lemme' put it this way:

If you are a person moving out of country and want to keep your bank, let me save you some time:

Forget about it.




I just went through the most annoying 2 days of my technical life trying to set up a check scanner. From the moment I opened the box and read the (incomplete and lousy) directions, horror ensued. Couple that horror with waiting forever for some tech people to call me back and Tobe Hooper would be horrified.

First off, no one asked if I used Windows. I don't. I am a graphic designer, therefore I use a Mac. Further, I hate Windows, but I digress. It seems that with all of the swashes and globe graphics I've been looking at over the past 2 days, my check scanner absolutely will not work in Mac OS.

I thought to myself, "no worries, I'll just partition my Mac and install Windows (yuck.) Long story short, my XP wouldn't install because I don't have service pack such and such and Windows Update wouldn't install it properly. And so, I reluctantly reassured myself that I could spend the 200 bucks I didn't have to upgrade to Vista, so off I went to pick it up.

Get home, re-partition my drive, install Vista.

At last, the phone rang with a tech support person. After all that, he said in a crushingly mild tone that "your scanner won't work even if you have XP partitioned on your Mac." and worse (and to the contradiction of the system requirements on the scanner packaging,) "It wont work with Vista on either system."

Awesome, then!

So now I sit holding a $200 copy of that piece of you know what, Vista that I can't return and a rock shaped like a scanner, its "DEPOSIT NOW!" logo strewn across its face in Comic Sans Itallic (eew) mocks me in Pantone 181C.

Worst of all, I have absolutely no Idea how I'm going to handle my deposits when we get there. Right now, I have my father as a signer so that my temporary billing address can be at his house and he can make deposits; but that's a micky mouse way to run a business in the long term.

So much for me!




If anyone over there can lead me to the best bank that has a branch on Rota, I'd be grateful. In the mean time, don't ever buy a PC, of course; but, more importantly, don't upgrade your Windows if you use a check scanner. You'll be stuck with me in banking hell.

:)

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are two banks located on Rota, 1) Bank of Guam, and 2) Bank of Saipan. I recommend Bank of Guam.

Bruce A. Bateman said...

You have just begun to enter banking hell.

You will quickly find that US chartered banks here do not play by US rules. Wait until you find that an off island check is held and not credited to your account for 15 WORKING days by most banks here even though we both know they receive electronic funds from the paying bank in a day or two max, sometimes instantly. There are many more similar examples.

I strongly suggest you keep your US bank accounts intact and only shuffle funds in and out of the banks-in-name-only out here.

A G Gatto said...

Thx, all.

I think I'm gonna bring the scanner with me and see if I can find someone whose computer I can use every now and again.

This is a real pain. Darn you, Bill Gates.

;)

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Angelo Villagomez said...

I keep the bank in Florida. All of the revenue from my blog ads are automatically deposited there. It is a nice place to keep some money in an emergency, plus if I don't touch it, I've got a nice little nest egg should I ever decide to go back.

A G Gatto said...

I have mine going into my biz account. But I invoice my clients, some of whom don't do credit or direct deposit, so I'm kinda' worried about my billing right now.

BTW, can I use an image to link Beautify CNMI instead of text?

Thx

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Bree Reynolds said...

bank o guam is fdic insured. bank o saipan is not.

we use bank o hawaii, but they don't have a branch on rota. we also maintained our checking/savings in WA and wire money into it occasionally. our home mortgage still gets paid through that acc.