I am going to have a heart attack in a bank. 

I hate banks and I see RED every time I have to go into one. My blood pressure just goes sky high the moment I walk through those funny revolving doors. Thank goodness for Internet banking in this day and age otherwise I would have come to an untimely death many years ago. 

There are certain things that really irk me when it comes to banks. I get really annoyed when drawing money from the ATM and getting R200 notes only for instance. Banks don’t seem to understand that you cannot do anything with R200 notes. When you draw cash, you invariably draw the cash to pay for incidentals – you use a card for everything else. I cannot give my children a R200 note to use at the school canteen. I cannot pay my maid or my gardener in large notes either as they cannot use it to pay for their incidentals such as taxi fares etc. 

I have not had a bank account for the last 20 years.  I got fed up one day when they gave hubby better rates and account privileges when we have always earned about the same and are both 50/50 partners in various companies.  I reluctantly opened an account about a year ago again to appease the receiver of revenue here in South Africa.

Today was another one of those occasions that I had to go into the bank personally. 

Son no 2 lives in Dubai. He sold his car in South Africa 2 years ago when he moved to Dubai. The money has been sitting in an interest bearing account here. He now wants to buy a car in Dubai and needs the money. There is no way for him to transfer the money from his account in South Africa to his account in Dubai short of getting on a plane and going to the bank personally. 

So he transferred the money into my account via Internet banking and then I went to the bank to do a telegraphic transfer to his account in Dubai. Seems simple really.

I get the relevant forms and fill them in. The lady at the counter checks everything, then says she needs to check on something. She returns about 2 minutes later asking me who transferred the money into my account. I explain my son did. She asks who I am sending the money to – I explain I am sending it to my son in Dubai. She then says she cannot do the transaction and I need to put the money back into my sons account and my son needs to appear personally and send the money himself to Dubai. I explain that he lives in Dubai and cannot appear personally.  She then insists that the forms can be emailed to him, he can fill them in and send them back via mail.  WTF – mail – there is one thing that is worse in Dubai than it is in South Africa and that is the mail system.  The bank would be lucky to ever get the forms back and best case it would take 6 months.    I just don’t see what the big deal is – he put the money into my account to send to him. She then says that it looks like I am money laundering and they cannot process the transaction. Really – me being accused of money laundering!  No cash has been used to transact with and you can trace it all back from his account to my account – and if they process the transaction, back to him. I am allowed to send up to a R1million out of the country as a gift anyway and this is well below the limit. She still says it cannot be done. 

So I ask if I can send the money from a different account. And she says yes – as long as it is not the same money he gave me. I then had to go to the ATM and transfer funds from my various other accounts into Hubby’s account and then I transferred the money to my son from hubby’s account. Not sure what the bank or the receiver of revenue achieved here short of being real dicks about it all. 

I eventually left the bank needing an ice-pack to cool me down. My HRT tablets definitely don’t work when I get irritated. Why it is that everything has to be so complicated when it comes to banks.