We had a very quiet week in Sint Maarten as we watched many of our friends begin the next steps of their journey. We are still a couple of weeks away from getting on the move but we have a rough plan in place as long as every country doesn’t change their requirements again on June 1st. Since it has been a slow week, I thought that I would spend this time discussing global economy. Over the past decade, the words “global economy” have become the catch phrase in politics, business and media. “The United States is leading the world in the global economy”. Well, I am here to tell you, if we are the leaders, global economy has a long way to go. I can’t speak to how well global economy is working for other entities but I can tell you for those of us living outside of the US, every day mundane tasks are a challenge. When we first arrived in the Dominican Republic last year, I fired up my computer and attempted to log onto my BBT banking site. Denied. Again and again, the system stated that I was not allowed to log in and I needed to call customer service. Hmmm, how should I call customer service since my Google Fi phone, which promised to work in over 220 countries in the world, did not work in the DR (even though the DR was on the list of the 220 countries). Finally conquering the phone issue, I called customer service at BBT to be told that I was not allowed to log into my account because the DR was a “high risk” country. High risk for what? Death by rogue chicken? No, high risk for fraud and identity theft. I almost choked to death as I explained that the majority of people in the DR could not even write their name much less figure out how to steal my identity. Nevertheless, high risk country it was so no online banking for me. I researched loopholes and found that I could purchase a VPN service that I could load onto my computer. Done. Now I can be any number of places in the USA including Miami, New Jersey or Los Angeles all with a click of a button while sitting on my boat in the middle of the Caribbean. Like magic, I could log onto my bank accounts without any issue even though I was still in a “high risk” country. Ah, the logic of it all! Next issue, I wanted to open a Bank of America account because BBT (now known as Truist…who chose that horrible name?) has very little online banking options and no worldwide locations. By this time, we were in the USVIs so I figured it should be an easy event. I logged onto BofA and entered in all of my information to open a new account. A few days later I received an email saying that I needed to come into a BofA branch. Sigh. I called BofA (because Google figured out how to work in the USVIs) and they could not tell me why I had to come into a branch but they could not set up a bank account for me on the phone or online. Sigh again. So, when I was in Charleston a few weeks ago, I walked into BofA and met with the banker who immediately opened an account for me. When I asked her why I could not do it online, she responded, “I had to verify your identity by seeing two forms of ID in person”. That certainly screams global economy. I asked her about transferring my Health Savings Account to BofA. She stated that I could do that online since she had verified my identity. So, I went online while still in Charleston and opened the account. When I got back to the boat, I noticed that the account was still not showing active. I online chatted with BofA and was told that they had closed my account because they could not verify my identity. Needless to say, the account was reopened by the end of the chat and I am pretty sure that fellow chatting with me took a sick day the next day. Now for the transfer of funds. Bank of America emailed me a form to fill out in order to start the transfer process. I completed the form and then called BBT to make sure that I had the information correct. The BBT representative said, “I hope you aren’t wanting this done in a hurry because you have to mail the form and the bank only gets our mail once a week”. Again, wow. “Why do you only get mail once a week?” I inquired. “The bank was trying to cut cost so that’s what they decided”. I wanted to tell him that I would have saved money by firing the consulting agency that came up the name Truist but what do I know. So, in this “global economy”, I filled out the BofA form, emailed the form to my sister in Georgia who then printed the form, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and mailed it through the ever-so-secure US postal service to BBT. By my calculations given that BBT only gets mail once a week and then the next department will get the forwarded form the following week, my HSA transfer that should have taken 6 seconds, will probably take 6 weeks. Welcome to global economy at its best!
We’ll be moving over to the marina this week to enjoy some nice hot showers and a swimming pool for a few days prior to making our move south. Since I never know what day it is, I thought last week was Memorial Day so just ignore last week’s well wishes. Here they are again….have a wonderful Memorial Day!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
|