I am the chairperson of a committee organizing a public, non-profit event in Montreal in May, 2000. People are registering for this event from all over the world. One of the problems we have encountered is how to transfer money from one country to another, swiftly, efficiently, and painlessly.
You would think that with the world gone hog-wild with the internet and digital wireless communications and fiber-optic cables and mergers and the new world economy, that this would be a simple thing to do. Franz, in Germany, wants to send me $75 Canadian to pay for his registration. He logs onto the internet, right, and transfers the money from his account to our Event account. Done, right? Simple. Easy.
Well, if you’re not already rolling on the floor laughing your head off, you’ve probably never tried to accomplish a simple transaction like that before.
Franz did indeed send us his $75 dollars. He got some kind of money order (it’s in German so I’m not sure what you call it) and sent it to me. I took it to my local Bank of Montreal. They accepted it and told me it would take three weeks to clear. They also warned me that there would be surcharges. Well, I knew the Canadian bank vampires would get their fangs into it right after the German bank vampires, and I knew it would be outrageous and excessive, but, hey, you can’t fight every battle, so I merely smiled and nodded and went on my way.
A few weeks later, I got a call from the bank. A nice woman named Cindy said, “You don’t want to cash this money order.” I said, “Why not?” She said, “Because it will cost you $15.” I said, “well, I know that’s pretty bad, and it’s a rip-off, but we really don’t have much choice. At least, we still get $60.00 out of the deal.” She said, “No– you won’t get any money out of the deal. It cost $90.00 in bank fees to process the check.”
!!
Now, if you’ve read through some of my earlier rants, you already know how I feel generally about the banks. But this is a new low. For Franz to get his $75 from Germany to Canada is going to cost $90.00. This is something he could also have done with an envelope and a $1 stamp, and some cash. At least then, I would only have been hit with the exchange rate.
Vampires. They’re all vampires out there. It’s getting depressing. VISA handles some of our registrations. They take a cut of 2 or 3%. The Bank of Montreal kindly provides us with a free “Community Account” but they still take their share of the exchanges from U.S. to Canadian dollars. The American banks and European banks each take their cut. Every time money moves in our economy, the vampires at the banks get their fangs out.
Why? The banks know that you can’t sit there and watch them and add up the total amount of time it takes for them to actually handle your check. But I do know that bank employees are not paid a lot of money (only the managers are, but they don’t handle checks) and that a trained employee doesn’t take more than a minute or so to stamp a check and put it into a pile to be sent on to the next clearing house. And with all this globalization going on, of course, we’re supposed to see all the advantages of increased efficiencies and productivity.
And, of course, we all know that the banks are making record profits these days.
Of course the “efficiency” stuff, the rationale for mergers and the new global economy, is pure nonsense. The increased efficiency is really only in the way they squeeze the customers for more and more money by applying vague and arbitrary surcharges to every conceivable transaction.
Efficiency? I’ve been to the bank three times to deposit checks. The first teller took about 45 minutes– I am not exaggerating– to process about 20 checks in U.S., Canadian, and European coinage. The second teller was indeed efficient: about five minutes to do the same amount of work. The third teller was in the middle: about 30 minutes. She was completely confused. She had to get help. She did not know how to deposit a check from Texas. Two of the three tellers had insufficient training.
Efficiency? I went at 2:00 in the afternoon and there were about ten people in line, and only one or two tellers working. It was slow and inefficient.
Efficiency? Remember when the banks promised that they wouldn’t start hitting us up for surcharges when they started driving us all out of the lobbies and into the vestibules to use the banking machines? Surprise, surprise– a few months ago, the Bank of Montreal sent me a notice that they were now going to charge me .50 for every transaction on the ATM. Everyone else on the face of the earth uses computers to increase productivity and efficiency. But the banks– it must be costing them a fortune to be so efficient– that’s why they keep hitting us up with service charges!
The banks have a cooperative monopoly in this country. No single bank has a monopoly, of course, but neither do they really compete with each other. All of them hit you with the same basic service charges and other aggravations.
The solution is simple: the government should now require every employer to give employees the option of receiving their pay in cash. This is not as silly as it sounds. Why don’t they offer to pay you in cash now? Because it would cost them more to do it. But it seems pretty likely to me that if you took all the service charges and bank fees paid by any group of 50 or more employees, you could easily do it more cheaply than the banks.
The banks have the most incredible office towers in every major city. I wish God would grind them all into the dust.