A nasty nasty thing happened over the weekend

I have been collecting money for our (Red Hats) bus trip that is coming up next month. Today being the first free day that I have had for awhile, I decided to go and pay it, although need to sign paperwork so I paid the bus company a visit. I paid using my credit card and put the cash into my account.

Not my favorite thing, collecting money, especially if it is not mine but I must say our group is really good about paying up and I do have them trained now, to give me money one at a time. We dont do a receipt book as we don't take that much money instead we just use a members list and I make sure that I mark off the person's name as paid before talking to anyone else. Thankfully the money and people all married up.

I was transferring money from my account to the credit card and saw that there was $3200 pending! What! should only have been the bus trip money and possibly a little more as Warren had filed the jeep so not more than a thousand. I did some research and discovered that on Saturday night there was a transaction put through from a travel agent!!!!! I rang Warren to ask if he had planned and pay for a surprise trip. I didn't think so but needed to ask, he said no and to ring the bank straight away.

Luckily they did take my call as even though the account is in joint names, he is the primary holder. They have cancelled our cards and will issue new ones and have to wait until the transaction goes through before they can do any thing more. Thank goodness I did check, sometimes it could be two weeks between us checking our accounts on-line.

Banks in China

So many big banks in China in some places it seems like one on every corner. Any bank that I used had a security officer and one or two staff members out the front. Mostly the member at the front did speak English and they were there to direct people to which teller or form that they needed.

Warren and I had both kept our bank accounts open when we left as we always intended going back and thought that being able to put money into an account there rather than carrying a large amount of money would be a good idea. Well, yes we returned but we didnt use them so one day we went into the bank to close the accounts and of course withdraw the money that we had in there.

Armed with our bank cards and passport we head to the bank. We were given a slip with a number and then it was sit and wait. There were four rows of seats, several people were already sitting. Five tellers are working and above the tellers is a number  that that they are dealing with at the time.We only have nine numbers in front of us, five tellers, nine numbers, no time at all. Twenty minuets went by and only two people had left, hummm not going to be as quick as we thought.

After an hour we are at the front, we decided to go separately.I could hear Warren talking to his teller but mine didnt speak English or if she did, not to me.  Our accounts had been frozen because they hadn't been used for over twelve months so they had to be reactivated, so that meant two or three pieces of paper. Then our passports that had had to be photocopied did not match the passports that we had opened the accounts with which meant more paperwork. An hour at the front of the tellers and finally we were done with 360 RMB each in our hot little hands.

Those poor tellers, I felt guilty, I think that they filled out a dozen or more forms, I know that I had to enter my number around eight to ten times. I am sure they were glad to see the back of us.

At each tellers cubicle there is a press button with three buttons labelled in both English and Chinese, labelled Satisfactory, average or unsatisfactory  I would have liked to hit excellent but had to be happy with Satisfactory. All that paperwork!

Christmas shopping!

I try to avoid the shops a the this time of the year but I did have one gift to post so toodled off early yesterday,phew not early enough. There was a line up at the post office that went out the door. Luckily they had some-one who was helping to use the self service booth and as I only had one thing to do, she took me over there and did that for me. Jumped about five people in the queue.

Had a few other things to do to finish Christmas shopping, in all I visited five places and it took me two hours  any other time of the year, it would have been 30 minutes.

Actually the bank took the longest, I just wanted some information and was expecting to be able to pick up a brochure but they were in crisis as the terminals were down and there were lots of staff helping people to use the ATM's and laptops inside the bank to assess accounts on-line. I didn't realise that the info I wanted was on-line. Cant remember the last time  I went into that bank, as i use ATMs

Wrapped Chrissy presents yesterday and thankfully it is all done except for food shopping.