The banking experience of a country, I think, can be an interesting window into the culture of a people. Banking is a very real and very normal part of everyday life, and everybody at some point has to do it, so I feel that banking, as such, can be used as an ethnographic metaphor. In Scotland, for example (I will not go so far as to say the UK, because I have no banking experience there), setting up a bank account gives insight into the love of the Scottish for bureaucracy and queuing up.

From what I hear from every non-EU student I have ever talked to or overheard, setting up a bank account here has been Hell. For me, it has been no exception. Upon arriving in Edinburgh and receiving a letter from the University entitling me to a bank account, I went to the Bank of Scotland branch at the University. After waiting in line for 20 minutes, they tell me they are out of applications for the kind of bank account I need, so I have to go to another branch. The second branch says the same thing. OK, fine. I wait a while. I go to a branch close my to new flat in Abbeyhill, and the woman there says I can’t get a student account because I have no credit in the UK or EU, so I can only get a very basic savings account. OK, fine, just give me an account, I say.

So she signs me up for an appointment the next morning. I come in, hand her my passport and letter from the Uni, and she sets it all up right there. So the first thing I can’t figure out, is why they can set me up without an application at this bank but not at the other two branches I visited before. So it’s all set up, with some money being deposited in it, and they say they have to mail me my card and pin number. Sigh. What if I need money before then? Well, too bad. They look confused at the question.

So about a week later (a week of paying wonderful 4% conversion fees through my bank at home), I receive notice in the post giving me my pin number (which involves lateral thinking skills and puzzle solving, because it can’t just be simple). My card will come in a different posting. Great. A couple days later, I receive my card. Finally. But I can’t use it because it takes 10 days for traveler’s cheques (even in Sterling) to clear when you deposit them (at the time, apparently cashing them and depositing the cash was way more than they could handle).

But all seems well, until I try to register for online banking. With 5/3, as soon as you get an account, you have automatic access to online banking. Pretty simple. You log in, you do online banking. But of course, here, it’s a 12-step process, just like the program I’m going to have to take when this system makes me resort to shooting smack to cope. First I have to register. I click on the “how to register” button and it takes me to a page explaining how to do so. Fair enough. At the bottom is a button saying, “Register Now.” I assume that means I can register now, so I click on it and wait! I made a snap judgment! It takes me to a log-in page. I can’t for the life of me remember clicking on a “log-in” now button. So after a couple more clicks I finally get to a registration page. So I put in my account details, and then it takes me to an address page, where I put in my address, and then it takes me to a page where I can select my address (which I thought I had just put in) from a long list. So I select my correct address, and then the next page shows me a summary of all that I just input, and (surprise!) it has an incorrect address on it! So I hit the back button (despite the fact that the page says “hit ‘continue’ of anything is incorrect, or ‘back’ if you need to change anything”, which in itself I find terribly unhelpful) and do it all again, and the same thing happens again! So I hit continue, hoping that something will come of this. And I get a wonderful message stating that they are glad I registered with them–they give me a wonderful user name–and to complete the registration, I need to return to the log-in page and put in my user name and password which THEY WILL POST TO ME IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS. Oh, and due to the Royal Mail bullshit, I may not get it for 6 weeks or something equally ridiculous, if not equally long. And of course, they came up with my incorrect post address, which I typed in and selected correctly twice, so who knows where they will actually send my fun little password (even though they have sent correspondence to me correctly in the past). They then send me an email confirming that I have registered with them. Of course, they can’t send me my password in the email; that would make way too much sense.

So that is my tale of woe, even if it, as of yet, remains incomplete. I may run up to RBS to see what they can give me by way of a bank account that actually works. But so far, I am not alone. Maybe there is a support group here at the Uni for all of us who want to burn down all of the banks here and establish simple, working American banks like 5/3 and US Bank, or Citibank. I have never appreciated anything culturally American so much before.