So… The banker that helped me get the loan wants me to open an account. Fair enough.
They wanted it done this week. I’ve been a bit swamped so I worked really hard to get my work done. So today, Friday, I went by the Taishin in Danshui. I thought no big deal.
I go in, they don’t have a guard, they have a police officer guarding the bank. I go to the machine and I push the button because I know they’re gonna try to push the button for me and completely get it wrong. Then this guy’s like trying to dissuade me from opening an account because foreigners need to wait many hours to open an account.
I tell him I have to open one and go to sit down. Soon I have this cop, the bank manager and and someone else trying to explain to me that foreigners need to be vetted for many hours to see if they are laundering money. They’re all asking me to sit down and I am having none of it because I don’t like multiple people towering over me trying to ‘educate’ me. I call my real estate agent cause her English is better than the mortgage banker.
Where is the mortgage banker? He lives in Xinzhuang. He had told me last week to open an account. Didn’t matter which branch. Stupid me thought I could take the morning off and go to a branch in Taipei County, or at least might as well be Taipei County with the way people think.
The real estate agent gets on the phone and I try to explain to her what’s going on. I took the morning off to do this because you know, they close at THREE!..thirty. The cop pulls my phone out of my hand to talk to her. He wants to get the number of the banker in Xinzhuang, real estate agent’s confused. I’m going nowhere fast. He’s trying to write down the number my agent’s giving him and at this point, I want out. I have already been stripped of my dignity for having a bank cause a scene because I committed the crime of being a foreigner opening an account and instead of just letting me do my thing, they jumped to conclusions and start trying to judge me and goad me into something else or away from opening an account because they’re ‘helping’ me.
I ask for my phone back cause I wanna leave.
I ask again
I ask a third time
I lose it, full volume yelling at the cop to return my phone and rip the number place in line and leave.
I get to shihpai. So much better. While opening the account was slow, it was a lot nicer.
Though… they still insist on the ‘English’ name, (I call it a foreign name because I don’t have an English name) on the bank book so… a quarter of my name barely fits on the thing cause they render letters in full Chinese Character boxes… It’s ugly as sin. Hope they will upgrade their systems. But they were much nicer. I didn’t feel like I was being singled out as a foreigner and was able to do my shit.
Moral of the story? Open your banks in Taipei, especially in Xinyi where they’re actually trained to handle foreigners.
Danshui’s Taishin is fully deserving of its 2.6 rating.
Goddamn was this experience so similar.