The Taipei Kid

Poagao’s recent post on his bad experience at Bank Sinopac, a bank I won’t be going to anytime soon, reminded me of the temper tantrum I had at a certain American bank here when I was 18. This American bank and I seem to have had an up and down relationship, and now it is pretty much over.

It first went up when they paid to have my stolen textbooks replaced after I was stupid enough to leave them in a cubbyhole at the university bookstore. It went back down when I came to their office here in Taipei to pay a bill and was told I could only pay it if I had an ARC (the customer service rep I talked to in the States before I went to Taiwan that summer said I could pay the bill in Taipei, no problem–yeah, right). Needless to say, my snotty little 18-year-old self left the lady at the counter in tears and I was escorted out of the office by security. Unlike Charlize Theron’s experience, I was never approached by an agent and given a part in Children of the Corn III following my bank tantrum.

That American company tried to cancel my card a few years ago when they nearly went bankrupt, saying I had a bad credit report. (The reality is that all foreigners were viewed as “bad” when they did their little housecleaning operation.) I went and checked my credit report here and in fact, they weren’t listed on the report at all. Even the guy at the credit agency thought it was weird this bank’s card wasn’t showing up in the report. So the bank was lying. And now they’ve got a nice new switcheroo where a high annual fee for their new card shows up on your bill and when you call and ask about it you
get “Oh–don’t you remember the notice we sent you?”. (Oh yes, I think about it everyday–bye-bye! Where are the scissors?) Fun trivia: They actually asked me to mail the card back to them, as in I have to spend money to cancel the card.