Ah, the reasons you should commit to updating your blog in a timely manner are many, this little adventure happened to me in the first weeks of March.
The geeks reading this blog will probably already know the problem involving the wolf, the farmer, the chicken, the bag of grain and the river, due to the vagaries’ of the Chinese Banking System, some bad luck and STUPID Chinese ATM behaviour, I found myself with a bit of an intractable problem on my hands.
I’d moved into my new place, and needed money for rent and security deposit. The great news was that I had the money in my brand new shiny HSBC bank account. Bad news was that I needed one of those random number generator thingy’s to transfer my money to the landlord, or a passport and my presence at my local HSBC branch.
My passport, as Murphy’s Law would have it, was currently located somewhere in the large Ministry of Labor building in Pudong, and not due to emerge out of said building for weeks.
When I opened my bank account, I was still living in the hotel, so had to give that address when opening the account. After a few calls to HSBC, they assured me that the random number thingy had been delivered. The Hotel, as it turns out, had not seen it.
At this stage everything was cool, I’d managed to keep the landlord at bay with a few emails and a guarantee letter with chop from the relocation company that funds would be forthcoming.
A few more days pass, the guarantee letter has now lapsed, still no random number thingy.
After a few more (now frantic) calls to HSBC, they finally tell me that they used registered mail and gave me the bar code number of the mail that had been sent. I called up the hotel, gave them this number and they FOUND my mail. EXCITEMENT!!
That night after work I eagerly set off for the hotel, fronted up to the concierge and was presented with a very THIN envelope, totally NOT what I was expecting. The bitter irony was that this was a letter telling me that I now had all necessary funds to pay my rental and security deposit, the funds that I cant get at due to no passport or random number thingy. I was at a bit of a low.
This same night the ATM machine ate my card. I was at a financial low.
After begging HSBC to urgently send me a new random number thingy, the bastards only relented when I told them I was out on the street if I could not transfer the money.
My random number thingy turned up the next day after 20 minutes of “pitiful” begging, problem solved!
