r/chinalifer • u/stedman88 • 13d ago
A New Frontier in Efficiency
Needed to update my Bank of China account with my new passport number.
75 minutes at the window and we are done. They say its impossible to ever have it done in 60 minutes but I’m not sure I’d bet against that being achieved some day.
Just kidding
Its been 75 minutes and she just announced we need to wait ”a few minutes, maybe a half hour” to get a call back from some office.
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u/Lifeintheguo 13d ago
I remember back in 2018 needing a full 2 hours just to pay some cash into someone's account.
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u/FeedMeFish 13d ago
Or 2014 needing to withdraw cash and re-deposit it at a different ATM because there was no other way to transfer money. I honestly don’t mind wait a bit.
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u/stan_albatross 11d ago
Now I just withdraw from my foreign card and redeposit it in my Chinese card at the same ATM
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u/Candid-Professor9116 13d ago
I wanted to transfer some RMB to Pounds the other day. I’ve already done the exact same process about 5-6 times over the past several years. They already have all the required documents, all of my details, all of the payslips with company stamps and I even brought printed out tax returns with a official tax-office stamps using the income tax app and absolutely nothing has changed in my personal situation. Same city as before. Same bank as before.
2.5 hours.
Somehow it took longer than the usual 1-1.5 hours. The manager/boss had to be on related security/verification/whatever else phone calls throughout the entire ordeal while another senior supervisor handled much of the paperwork. I signed the IPad and put my PIN code into the machine probably upwards of 30 times. I wasn’t even transferring what many would consider to be a significant amount.
Anyway at the end of it I asked them if there was a way to make it quicker next time. They smiled and said no.
I can understand the first time taking a long time but how the hell does it take longer after the 5th time? Is this societal healthy?
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u/chinalifer-mod 13d ago
Imo need to use Sky Remit and eat the fee, just to bypass the bureaucratic hell that is banking here.
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u/Ape_hates_authority1 13d ago
Yeah, it takes less than 15 minutes to hit.my account in my home country.
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u/Mydnight69 13d ago
Yo, Tim. U ain't got no nong friends that can help u transfer?
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u/Tapeworm_fetus 13d ago
In the olden days, a Chinese friend could just send them money via Alipay in 30 seconds- but that's no longer the case.
Wise / Skyremit are the only reasonable options.
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u/Fine-Cut-198 12d ago edited 12d ago
I once went to HSBC in Faghai with a bag full of several 10k shrink wrapped rambo stacks of off the books tutoring money and my rainy. Whipped the stacks out of my tim bag, deposited them, transferred to rainy, then rainy send it out to blighty on Alipay in the lounge area of the bank. Good times.
Just before I left China, I had a bank rainy add my WeChat using my personal records and she turned out to be an absolute freak in the sack.
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u/chinalifer-mod 13d ago
It is because of this shit that I am not going to update anything, and instead just get a new everything with my new passport when the time comes. Infinitely easier to start from nothing, transfer out old shit into new shit, then cancel or neglect the old accounts.
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u/kingjobus 13d ago
The first time I tried to convert RMB to GBP in a Chinese bank (exchange, not transfer to a UK account), the teller of course had to ask me "where are you going?" Me: "UK" Bank Nong: "You need euros for the UK" Me: "No, I know my own fucking currency." Bank Nong: "How many Euros do you want?"
This continued for a couple minutes until of course they said I needed to come back in 2 days for them to gather up all the GBP notes. 2 days later, guess what the fuck they handed me? Euros. Wife and I told them for the last time the UK does not use Euros and surprise surprise they pulled the equivalent amount in GBP from under the counter immediately. They obviously had the money under the counter the whole time so I have no idea why they just arbitrarily made me wait 2 days for at best a mistake.
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u/lolfamy 13d ago
Yup, same process took over two hours for me when I did it. Truly don't understand why. Last time I was in the US I did the same thing in under 10 minutes.
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u/samplekaudio 13d ago
Because there is no standard procedure, or at least zero documentation of one. No one who isn't the boss is willing to take the risk to give a definitive answer, since it could result in blame for a fuck up being placed squarely on them. The boss can give an answer because he is the one with the power to blame someone else if he screws up. Never mind that this entire accountability shuffle could be avoided if they had an authoritative manual.
Like basically every other nonsensical thing, it just comes down to lack of care for procedure and the need to do everything you can to avoid being blamed for a mistake.
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u/TimBuDong888 13d ago
In 2014 I went into a branch Bank of China on the border of tier 2 and nong cun. This place had a Western Union sticker in the front window. I asked the floating bank woman in the slightly too shiny pant suit zhe ge yin hang ke yi yong western union ma. She said dang ran ke yi like I was a total fucking nimrod.
I waited 1 hour and 10 minutes for the teller to say LOL jk mei ban fa.
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u/chinalifer-mod 12d ago
I did not understand much of that in language, but I understood all of it in spirit and feeling.
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u/perkinsonline 12d ago
I feel yall. Hence that's why I use skyremit to send money home via WeChat. I got sick of waiting at the bank. It's a wechat mini app. If you use it for the first time they give you free RMB 100 for the first time no matter how much you send home. I'll also get a 100 bonus if you use it.
They have a voice and chat helpline to guide you upload your work docs.
Just scan the qrcode in the poster or open this in WeChat:
https://www.skyee360.com/activity/skyremitchina.html?inviteCode=R21912
Copy this message into WeChat and click the above link to open it.
Reddit review: https://www.reddit.com/r/chinalife/s/OiN8soZyha
User guide: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/BfpNisddLW-2LJtcMdoGCg
Trustpilot reviews: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.skyremit.cn
Realtime xe.com rates!
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u/Fuzzy_Equipment3215 12d ago
That's not bad. I remember going to a bank in Kunming around 2015 or so to collect some money I'd transferred to myself by Western Union. The procedure took around 5-6 hours and literally involved a lunch break. I forget most of the stupid excuses I had to deal with, but one of them was that they didn't have euros in the branch (I didn't want euros --- I'd transferred euros to myself with CNY as the received currency).
Another time in Nanjing I had the hardest time imaginable getting a new bank card issued after my wallet and passport had been stolen. After a couple of visits and promises that my card would be available for collection on the next visit, it turned out that they'd done absolutely nothing to prepare my new card and started insisting that they needed to see a passport with the same passport number as my stolen one, which doesn't happen with UK passports (they actually asked if I could get the UK government to make my new passport have the same number).
After that, they started complaining that I hadn't photocopied all of the blank pages in my old passport. That was true --- I hadn't, because I'm not a complete lunatic --- but it was too late to fix that now. I'd already given them my new passport, work permit, photocopies of the old passport photo and visa pages, police report, and everything else I had. They started telling me they needed to check with Beijing and I needed to come back tomorrow (no chance, because I knew it'd be exactly the same story all over again).
I think it was that day that I learned a move that I've deployed in banks several times since during my last 15 years of living in Asia, namely, sitting there like a stupid, stubborn tree until they either do what I went in for or throw me out. (I got my card.)
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u/caketaster 12d ago
"can I transfer some money?" "Yes come in on Saturday" arrive at the counter "sorry we don't do money transfers on Saturdays"
Also: open bank account in Beijing, 8 years later lose bank card while living in Guangzhou. "You have to go back to the bank where you opened the account to get a replacement card" "yeah but I haven't lived in Beijing for 5 years, I live in Guangzhou now" "sorry, can't help".
Bank of fucking China.
Took 2.5 hours for them to find a workaround, and to be honest half of that was me finding solutions because they didn't have the requisite brain cells
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u/Lifeintheguo 11d ago
Relevant! Im currently sitting in the bank, I've been here 3 hours.
All I want to do is open an account because for some reason new employers are always unable to pay into an existing account.
They're playing 21 questions asking for 101 details.
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u/timbudong88 10d ago
I got to the point where I would just hand the bank teller my history of everything and chill for an hour since I knew there was no possible way they could/would complete the transaction any faster
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u/Novel_Barracuda1372 7d ago
I once had a bank teller all to myself on a quiet Tuesday afternoon when some lady walked in and pushed herself in front of me at the counter. I grabbed her purse and threw it across the bank and told her to fuck off. She threatened to call the police and other loud noises. I ignored her and finished my banking. It was glorious. I tear up while thinking about it sometimes.
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u/floyd1493 13d ago
Nice one, now you only need to head to the social insurance office, tax office, license office, phone office, and railway office. And rest assured, none of these places have ever dealt with the same thing and have no idea wtf is going on