Banking Part 2

I arrived back in the UK on Saturday. I had very little money in my wallet so I went to the nearest cash machine, and took out some money. They didn't charge me because it wasn't my own bank. They didn't charge me because it was the weekend. Getting my own money from the cash machine was free.

While I was at the cash machine, I topped up my phone credit. This was not one of a limited number of transactions that I could carry out at the cash machine over a 3 month period. The phone company did not charge me £3 for the privilege of buying a service from their company. It was free.

Then I made a phone call. When I had finished, the phone automatically told me how much credit I had left. None of my money had been eaten by the invisible monster that secretly ate 30 euros of internet credit in Italy.

Then today I went to the bank again. Despite the fact that it was Monday and despite the fact that it was lunch time, the bank was open. Ten minutes and one signature later, I had deposited my euros in my current account. The ease of the operation left me smiling almost as much as the exchange rate.

Banking

I went to the bank on Friday afternoon with 2 friends. When we arrived in Italy, we opened introductory accounts with them and, although they knew in advance that we were coming, it took 4 hours fot ten people to open accounts and none of the staff seemed to know what traveller's cheques were or how to pay them into an account. Their inefficiency, coupled with the fact that the bank is only open for about 5 hours a day, only one of which is in the afternoon, had put me off going back even though they never sent me the credit card that I asked for and which I probably paid for. (A credit card is pretty much a necessity in Italy because bancomat cards don't have card numbers and so you can't use them to shop online).

On Friday, however, we had to go because our free "Welcome" accounts were about to expire and we had to face up to the cruel, complicated world of Italian bank charges.

In the UK, bank charges are what you pay if you go over your overdraft limit or a cheque bounces. In Italy, you pay to have the account, be given a bancomat card, be given a credit card, be issued with statements and for the privilege of withdrawing money from the cash machine. If you use a cash machine from another bank, it costs 1.50 euros every time. You pay for something called a "bollo" every month, but despite the bank manager's lengthy explanation of what a "bollo" is, I am none the wiser. The word translates as "stamp" but I have no idea what they are stamping. Their feet, perhaps.

This time, it took an hour and a half for the three of us to choose and open our new accounts and for the bank manager to try to convince us to open some kind of savings account that pays a paltry 2% interest (which is nevertheless infinitely more than the 0% I get on my new current account). It wasn't a bad experience. I discovered that my Italian was good enough to cope with the intricacies of the banking system and the manager was friendly, patient and helpful. He even shared his Christmas chocolates with us and gave us a free calendar. Even with the best customer service in the world, however, there is no getting around the fact that banking in Italy is far more complicated, expensive and time-consuming than it needs to be and I hope I don't need to go back for a long time!