Getting Money from a Branch of My Bank Outside of Loscoat
I’m visiting the Parc du Morvan in Burgundy. To my amazement—I don’t know why, because they’re everywhere—I see a branch of my bank as I drive to my hotel in the village of Anost. In the U.S., I would not care less. My bank spends millions of dollars a year to convince me it’s my friend, but I know better. If they really were my friend, they’d lower their fees and hire more tellers so I could get out of there faster and on with my life—which is odd, actually, because I spend more time in wedges at Crédit Agricole than I do in lines in the U.S., and I consider the French bank more of a friend. It’s like I have a friend and they left the light on for me. I, who thoroughly distrust banks, bankers, globalism, multinational corporations, profits, the free market, Milton Friedman, the entire Chicago school of economics, stocks, Wall Street, the prime, and the invisible hand, feel comforted that there’s a branch of my bank in this village. Talk about being desperate for friends.
I decide to be prudent—thanks to Sally—and check the balance in my account in the morning. I wake early and eat breakfast—coffee, baguette, croissant, butter, and jam—and wait for the bank to open. At nine o’clock, when it’s supposed to open, no one is there. By nine fifteen I worry. Has this branch closed? Did Crédit Agricole fold? Has there been another international monetary crisis in the last twenty-four hours? A kid on a bike whizzes past me and yells, “Lundi.”
Right. In the blur of travel, I lost a day and forgot it’s Monday, and banks are closed.
I drive through the parc, hike, eat a yummy Burgundian meal of Charolais steak with pinot noir, pass out again, wake, and have breakfast—same as the day before, always the same as the day before. Don’t French people ever want anything different? Pancakes, two eggs over easy, French toast, for God’s sake, where is it? I have never even seen it in France. At nine o’clock, I go to the bank. There’s a wedge of people waiting to get inside.
When it’s my turn I step forward and say, “Bonjour.”
“Bonjour,” the smiling teenager sings.
“S’il vous plaît, le solde,” and I hand him my checkbook.
He looks at the checkbook, then at me, and stops smiling. He’s staring at me, bewildered.
“Voudrais vous écrie, s’il vous plaît . . . ” and I make a writing motion with my hand, “le solde pour moi?”
“Anglais?”
“Américain.”
“Bon.” He calls a young lady over who explains in perfect English that my account isn’t at this branch.
Now it’s my turn to look at them, bewildered. Do they really think I don’t know where my bank is? Do I look and sound that out of it? “Oui,” I acknowledge. “My branch is in Brittany, Finistére, Loscoat,” and I show her the address on the checkbook.
“Oui, oui,” they both nod, happy to have that agreement, in a way that tells me this conversation is over. Things are so bad, it drives me back to French.
“Monsieur.”
“Oui.”
“C’est Crédit Agricole.”
They look at each other, then at me. I now know how the kids in special ed feel, and it isn’t very nice. “Bien sûr,” they say to each other, both of them pointing to the sign that says Crédit Agricole.
“Et c’est ne pas possible j’ai le solde pour cette compte?” It’s not possible I have a total for this account?
“Non.”
“Pourquoi.”
“L’information n’existe pas.”
This is a national bank—international—one of the largest in the world, and they can’t access their own account from another branch of their own bank. Holy, holy cow. It’s unbelievable.
I then do something even more unbelievable. “Bon,” I say, and hold out my hand for my checkbook. The young lady cheerily hands it back. I open it and write my name, then the date and the village—both in the wrong places, and m/d/y instead of d/m/y—and “deux cents euros,” about two hundred fifty dollars worth, and hand it to her, saying, “S’il vous plaît.”
She immediately begins filling out papers. When she’s finished, she gives me the ubiquitous waiver to sign and hands me ten twenty-euro notes. As usual, she doesn’t look at my passport or ask for any ID. Everywhere I go in France, it’s the same. Getting money is as easy as that . . . Until the day it’s not.
Donna and I are in Paris, dining at an old, expensive restaurant, celebrating her birthday. When the bill arrives, I hand the waiter my Visa card and watch amused, surprised, and embarrassed as the card is rejected once, twice, three times. I hand him my American Express card, which is also rejected. So are Donna’s MasterCard and Capital One.
I pay by check, which they gladly accept without ID, no problem, but just in case—because we’re low in cash, the cards could be rejected again, and I don’t want to run out of money—I decide to go to the bank first thing in the morning to get more euros.
I wake early, wondering if I’ll have to make an appointment, if they’ll even have money, if they’ll cash my check. Thinking about these and worse things, I’m the first person at the bank.
A neatly manicured, unruly-haired fellow in a black suit rolls up the metal barrier. As soon as it’s up, I blurt, “Monsieur, j’ai une compte avec Crédit Agricole . . . ” I show him my checkbook. “Voudrais-vous donnez moi le caisse pour le chèque?” Will you give me the cash for a check?
“Quoi?” What?
“C’est nécessaire j’ai fait un appointement pour d’argent?” I find out later appointement doesn’t mean appointment, it means salary, which is about money, but not what I want to ask. The word I want is rendezvous, but I can’t say it without thinking of illicit sex . . .
He’s looking at me as if I’m crazy. I persist, because the way he’s looking at me is nothing compared to how Donna looked at me in the restaurant, and I never want to see it again.
“C’est possible vous donnez-moi d’argent aujourd’hui?” It’s possible you give me money today? Anywhere else and I’d be in cuffs.
“Aujourd’hui?” he says, which I take as a yes.
I follow him to his desk and hand him my checkbook. “S’il vous plait, je voudrais mille euros.” I’d like one thousand euros, please.
He looks at the checkbook, and says, “Le maximum est huit cent euros.” Eight hundred maximum.
He has no idea if I’m Bill Gates’s uncle, Madonna’s lover, or vice versa, or how much money I have in my account. “Pourquoi?” I demand, outraged.
He gives me a long explanation, which I take to mean, “That’s how it is,” take it or leave it, and concludes with “par semaine.”
Eight hundred euros a week! That’s all I can take out of my own account! It is outrageous. Meanwhile, he’s tapping numbers. Then all of a sudden he leaves and goes to the back.
Oh, merde . . .
He returns in five minutes with his colleague, an older, fashionably unshaven fellow wearing the same black suit. “Mr. Greenside, désolé, désolé.”
An apology, about time...
“Le maximum est quatre cent euros par semaine.”
“Four hundred euros a week! Pourquoi?”
He hands me back my checkbook and points to my name.
“Pourquoi je suis américain?” Because I’m American?
“Non.” He points at the address beneath my name and the postal code. “Vingt-neuf.”
“Oui. Finistère.”
“Exactement. Le maximum pour une personne qui habite en Bretagne est quatre-cents euros par semaine.” The maximum for people who live in Brittany is four hundred euros a week.
“C’est different si j’habite à Nice?” It’s different if I live in Nice?
“Oui.”
“Et Paris est different aussi?”
“Bien sûr.”
If this was the U.S., I’d scream, “Discrimination!” but in France discrimination is a good thing, a sign of culture, intelligence, and class—so I shut my mouth and take my four hundred euros, thankful we’re in
Paris just five more days. I spend those euros vigilantly and reluctantly—and only after asking, “Acceptez-vous les cartes de crédit américaines?” If the answer is no, I walk away, pay by check—or if Donna really wants the purchase, with my rapidly diminishing cash.
The following summer the same thing happens in La Rochelle: our credit cards work, work, work, and then don’t work. I go to the bank to get a thousand euros and leave with my four hundred euros for the week.
That’s when I decide to get a French debit card.
I go to my bank in Loscoat and rendezvous with the new designated English speaker, who replaced the old designated English speaker, who had been at the bank for a month as of three weeks ago.
“Bonjour,” I say, and hand her my checkbook. “I’d like to get a debit card for when I travel. Do I qualify?”
She taps my account number into her computer, and says, “Yes, of course,” and hands me a remarkably short, simple form to fill out.
While I’m filling out the form, she’s telling me the terms, none of which I pay attention to—figuring it’s bank-talk, informing me about my rights and privileges and all the ways the bank can violate them—when I hear her say, “The maximum cash withdrawal is four hundred euros a week.”
“Four hundred a week from the card and whatever else I withdraw from my checking account, right?
“No. Four hundred total each week.”
“I can withdraw that much cash right now with my checkbook. I need the card so I can withdraw more when I travel—like I do in the U.S.”
She makes a pouty motion with her lips and shrugs, telling me this isn’t the U.S., it’s France. “You can withdraw more at this branch. When you’re traveling, the maximum is four hundred euros a week.”
“Merci,” I say, shake her hand, and leave.
Donna and I now travel armed with my Visa card, her credit cards, my French debit card and checkbook—and more euros than either of us want to carry. As long as people cash my checks with no questions, ID, or the correct written sum, date, and location, we’re OK—and so far, it’s worked. But how long can that go on? That’s what I wake up at night wondering and worrying about. How much longer before I make a mistake and am caught short, like Sally, Martin, and Louise? It’s a question I hope never gets answered.
Buying Euros
At least once a week, I search the internet for the best possible exchange rate, certain if I wait just a little bit longer a better rate will come along—until I wait too long and it passes me by. The truth is no matter when I buy I wish I’d bought sooner or later or more or less than I did. That’s capitalism for you: a perpetual nagging that someone somewhere got a better deal, and that I paid too much. That’s the bad news.
The good news is when I buy, I pay the lowest possible fees and get the best possible exchange rate for that particular nanosecond, because actual money never touches actual hands. It’s a virtual experience, which apparently is what the banks like best. I fax a check to American Foreign Exchange in Los Angeles, and they wire a cable to my account in Plobien—and voila!—euros are waiting for me when I arrive, except for the time they went to Corsica.
It’s different, though, for friends and family who visit. Mostly, they use the ATM to get euros and are shocked when they return home and discover the fees for the transactions and the percentages taken for the conversion, not to mention the exchange rates, are usurious. It’s even worse if they use a debit card—which is odd, because the money is immediately deducted from their accounts, and for giving that privilege and convenience to their banks, they’re charged an additional two to three percent. The only thing more expensive is cash. It should be the reverse, simpler is cheaper: you hand the teller a hundred-dollar bill, and she hands you eighty euros. Ha! You’re more likely to get seventy, and if you’re at Thomas Cook, American Express, an airport or change kiosk, sixty. You’re better off donating the money to Doctors Without Borders and taking a tax deduction.
Every exchange costs money. The banks have made sure of that. They’ve also made sure it’s impossible to know how much: some charge a flat fee per transaction, some charge a percentage, and some charge a combination of both. Nothing is posted. There’s no way to know the full cost of the exchange without asking, and there’s no one to ask, unless you call an international 800 number and wait thirty to eighty minutes to be connected with someone in India who will put you on hold while he or she searches for a supervisor who’s probably in London or New York. Worst, the rates and percentages change at will—the bank’s will—so the card you used last year because it was the cheapest is now the most expensive, unless you used Bank of America, which every year is exorbitant. Given this, what’s a tourist to do? It’s a question I’m regularly asked by friends—like LeRoy. He’s coming to visit and wants to know what he should do about money.
“Bring some,” I tell him. “A lot.” Then I tell him what I tell everyone. “Pay for everything you can with your credit—not debit—card, because even with the fees, it’s the best exchange you’re going to get—and bring traveler’s checks. The exchange rate is terrible, but they’re one hundred percent safe and secure if stolen or lost, and they’re not eatable by hungry, angry, hypersensitive, malfunctioning, or hacked ATM machines, as credit and debit cards are.”
This is what I tell LeRoy, and it’s what he does, and why two weeks later we’re standing in a wedge at the Poste.
I used to take people to the bank to cash their traveler’s checks, but a month ago, when I was waiting in a wedge to buy stamps—waiting an inordinately long time even in France—the woman in front turned around and said to the person behind her, in English-English, “It’s worth the wait, it’s the best exchange rate around.” Now, four weeks later, LeRoy and I get to find out.
We arrive at ten thirty, and the wedge is huge so I feel completely at home. LeRoy’s French is worse than mine, so I spend the minutes waiting, practicing what I’m going to say. “Je voudrais changer d’argent. Je voudrais changer monnai . . . Je voudrais caisse le cheque de voyager . . . ” What gives me courage is knowing, unlike in the U.S., once it’s my turn I can have as much time as I need, and no one in the wedge, except maybe another American, is going to hate me or wish me dead.
Ten minutes later we step up to the counter, and I say, “Bonjour, Madame. Je voudrais changer d’argent.”
She looks at me like I’m from England or Mars.
I try it slower. “S’il vous plaît. Je . . . voudrais . . . changer . . . d’argent . . . ”
She shakes her head no and begins speaking for two minutes very quickly.
I stand my ground and point to a tiny sign I’ve never seen before that says, monnaie, and put three of LeRoy’s one-hundred-dollar traveler’s checks on the counter.
She looks at the checks as if she’s never seen anything like them before, and as if neither the checks nor I exist. It’s enough to make me falter, thinking maybe there’s another French rule I don’t know about: no money before noon at the Poste; nothing over one hundred dollars. Who can tell? But in my bafflement, I hold my ground.
She does, too, but eventually realizes I’m too stubborn or stupid to leave. She picks up the checks and sneers at them. For a moment, I taste victory—until she groans, reaches down, and drops a New-York-City-size phone book on the counter. She opens the book—it’s filled with photocopies of zillions of brands of traveler’s checks from hundreds of banks in dozens of countries—and slowly starts turning the pages, looking for a match. The good news is LeRoy has American Express, so they’re sure to be there. The bad news is American Express starts with an A, and she’s begun from the back. Then I think U.S., United States, and feel bad about my bad thoughts until I remember it’s “États-Unis” in French, and I know I’ll be here until noon.
After five minutes of searching, she finds American Express. If LeRoy had some obscure, local, Oakland bank checks, we’d still be in line or jail. It takes her another several minutes to verify the checks in her hand mat
ch the photocopy in the book. We’re lucky. The checks in her hand are hundred-dollar checks. The check in the book is a hundred-dollar check. I can’t even imagine what would happen if the denominations didn’t match. She turns to her computer to find the exchange rate for that particular nano-moment, and I figure we’re on the way, but the paperwork has only begun.
She writes and writes and writes, filling out forms, rechecks her computer, and writes some more. When she’s finished, she calls to a younger, bald, chubby fellow, who appears to be her supervisor. As soon as he sees what she’s doing, his face becomes sepulchral, as if this is his personal money or his Christmas fund, and she’s about to give it away. He looks at the book of sample checks, sadly verifying the authenticity of the check. He confirms the exchange rate, which thankfully has not changed, reviews LeRoy’s passport, the information on it as well as the photo, which unfortunately was taken nine years earlier, causing Monsieur to squint and look and study until finally, reluctantly, probably seeing prison in his future or having to personally pay for this mistake, this signature, for the rest of his and his children’s lives, he sadly but floridly—he is after all a supervisor and in his penmanship his authority lies—initials the paper. Seventeen minutes from start to finish and we have three hundred dollars’ worth of euros in our hands.
(Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living Page 11
