Banks

One of my first tasks here in York was to set up a bank account for the Semester in Britain program—a simple thing into which Calvin College could transfer money so that I could easily pay for trains, hostels, museums, and whatnot.

Two years ago, the program director had a fantastic experience at Barclays, so last year’s director, when she arrived, went straight into Barclays. And was roundly refused.

So she went across the street to Lloyds and was received gladly. Even before arriving in England, I asked our host institution here to issue me a letter of introduction to Lloyds bank. My contact had it for me when she met me at the door to my residence with the keys.

Episode 1: George (not the saint)

The university had used the same template that they had used for my predecessor—whose report glowed with praise for this bank—so I walked cheerfully into Lloyds and was greeted warmly by one of the staff in the lobby.

The only thing I really knew about Lloyds was that T.S. Eliot had worked there, and I pictured a rather dark, cavernous lobby with high desks of dark oak, manned by bookish men in five-piece suits.

No. The lobbies of all big banks here are clean, exceptionally well-lit places with minimal furniture, zero clutter, and smartly dressed clerks roaming the floor to help anyone with anything.

I was immediately shown to a cubicle off to the side, and the greeter gathered some basic information from me.

She was puzzled. “So you’re not working for the university?” she asked. I said that, technically, no, I was was working at the university but paid by my American employer. “And you’re not a student?” The woman was clearly perplexed, and she flagged down a young man walking by.

George must have been a little more important, because he had a crisp office of his own down a little hallway, a place with a chair for him, a chair for me, a table for his computer, and precious little else. George, too, was perplexed.

Apparently the bank had very definite categories for who could open an account, and I didn’t fit into any of them. He kindly explained that he would need to file a waiver to those requirements with his superiors, and could he phone me in two days? I had two weeks before the students arrived, so I readily agreed.

Three days later, having heard nothing from George, I returned in person and asked for him. Somewhat embarrassed, he told me that he had received word just that morning that my request had been denied because I do not have a visa, so could I just “pop down to London” to visit the American embassy for a visa, and bring it back so that my file could “re-enter the assessment process”?

I thanked George very much for his time and walked out the front door. The first thing I saw, looking across the street, was Barclays.

Sure, why not?

Episode 2: A New Hope

This time the greeter in the lobby showed me not down a little hallway, but up to the second floor, where all of their Georges sat. I was ushered to the very end cubicle, where I was greeted by an extremely, exceedingly exuberant young woman. “You want to open an account?” she asked in an amazed tone, as if opening an account was the most novel idea she had ever heard of.

“Great!” she said and began typing rapidly on her keyboard. “Typing” is the wrong word. She hit every key so hard that the whole room seemed to be filled with the clatter, and she hit them so fast that I instinctively wondered whether she was fake-typing, like they do in movies or on TV.

Clickety-clackety-click-click-SMACK. “Okay! Let’s see what we have! So you’re a professor leading a group of students?”—clickety-clickety-clickety—“You know, I see a lot of students come in here, and they’re so… well, I don’t know.” She stopped typing. “They’re not like you and me, they’re so…”

“They’re so young?” I hazarded.

“Yes!” she said. “That’s it! They’re so young!”

I was this woman’s senior by at least two decades, and her phrase “like you and me,” implying some parity in our ages, gave me pause. It suggested that she was bad at math, which is not a quality I look for in a banker.

At the very least, I thought, she’s able to look up the requirements in real time instead of sending them upstairs and waiting for word to come back down.

“Okay!” she said. “You have a letter.” I passed it to her, and she read it carefully, chin in hand. She grew quite quiet. Her brow was furrowed. But before her eyes were even back on her screen, her fingers were punishing the keyboard again. Tickety-tackety-whack-whack-clackety “Yes!” she said. “We can do it!”

“Oh, good!”

“It’s a bit of an odd case, because you’re not a student, and you’re not an employee of the university. But there’s a category: ‘Miscelleaneous Academic Appointment.’ That’s you!”

“That’s me!”

“Yes! Now, let me look in my diary.”

At this point, I was wondering whether things between us had perhaps escalated further than I had intended, but it quickly became clear that a) this woman herself did not actually set up accounts, and that b) “diary” is the British word for “appointment book.”

“Could you come back to speak to another advisor in two days?”

I readily agreed and went on my merry—nay, much merrier—way.

Episode 3, in three acts

Act 1

Two days later I appeared again, and one of the slick young fellows in the shiny lobby greeted me with his iPad at the ready. I told him that I had an appointment, and who with, and he hit a few buttons. “Yes, sir,” he said. “He’ll be waiting for you upstairs.”

Up I went.

The man who greeted me was somewhere in his thirties, with a full but neat beard (not the possibly-ironic hipster kind) and an easy-going manner. He took my passport and letter of introduction and put a bunch of information into his computer, asking how long I’d been in Yorkshire, whether I liked it, what I was teaching, where in the USA I was from, and how to spell “Michigan”—“Oh!” he corrected himelf, “I can just put ‘MI.’”

Then he looked again at the letter of introduction, which was clearly addressed to Lloyds. I could read genuine regret on his face. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “They won’t accept it. It needs to be addressed to Barclays. We should have caught this immediately. Could you come back in two days?”

I reluctantly agreed and texted my contact at the university immediately for a revised letter.

Act 2

Two days later, I appeared with the revised letter. The man seemed visibly relieved. He had typed about three words into his computer, however, when his face fell. “Oh, dear,” he said. “The office I need to communicate with has just issued a notice. Apparently there’s been an evacuation.”

“An evacuation?” I asked, wondering whether this word, like “diary,” meant something different from what I thought. “Is it serious?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “Probably just a drill. We’ll just try to get a little more set up before they’re back online.”

It quickly became clear that there wasn’t really that much more information that he needed, because we spent about fifteen minutes of small talk. He heard that we were headed to Hadrian’s Wall and said that—although he had no real interest in history—he had been surprised when he moved here at how much Roman history there was in York.

He recounted a story about how an uneducated tradesman decades ago had hit his head in a basement and suddenly saw an entire Roman legion marching through the basement, cut off at their knees. The man later described the clothing in fine detail, and historians were able to verify that his description matched what the legion probably would have worn—and that the level of the Roman road had been about two feet beneath the level of the basement.

“But he hit his head first?” I asked—a detail that I hadn’t heard in any earlier versions of the story.

“Yeah, that he did,” said the banker. “Also the story was told in a pub, so—ah! Back online.”

He did a little bit of typing—normal, gentle typing—and looked back at the letter. “Hhhmm,” he said.

A very long pause.

“Hhhmm,” he repeated. “So, look,” he said. “I need proof of residence for six months. This letter says that you’re here from January through May. That’s only five.” He really seemed deflated, and he excused himself to consult with a few colleagues about a workaround.

“I’m sorry,” he said, as he returned and sat down. “I’m really sorry. We should have caught it immediately. The letter says only five months, and for proof of residence it needs to say six.”

Now I was thinking hard, but I thought I could see a way out. I asked if I could revise the letter and come back, and he fortunately had a slot the very next day.

Act 3

I went straight to my contact at the local university, in person this time, to explain the situation. “Listen,” I said. “I won’t actually be here six months. But Calvin College pays the lease on my residence for all six months. Could we revise the letter to say that?” And I suggested a little bit of appropriate wording.

My contact is extremely friendly, and extremely capable, and—as an immigrant from France—she has her own story to tell about tangling with British banks. But she is also quite conscientious, and she knew that her boss’s name and signature needed to appear on the letter. She’d have to check before approving that kind of revision, and her boss wouldn’t be in until the next day. I explained that I had a noon appointment at the bank, and she said she’d do what she could.

The next day, at 11:15, I had heard nothing. So I called. My contact and her boss had been in meetings all morning and had not had a chance to talk. But they would. At 11:30 I received a text that my letter would be ready soon. Thankful that York is a very small city, I stopped at the university for the revised letter at 11:45, bantered with the staff in the office for a bit, and made it to Barclays promptly at noon.

“Okay,” said the banker—now practically an old friend—“let’s send this off to the other office.”

“—And hope that they don’t have an evacuation,” he and I both said at the same time. And laughed.

More lag time waiting for approval. More small talk. I was looking for a musical instrument in York, and he recommended two or three good stores and said that he had learned to play guitar but never played the one he owned. (Only in hindsight did I realize that I should have asked to rent that guitar from him—I’m fairly sure he would have agreed, and we could have sealed the deal over a pint.)

And then, it was over. He printed my paperwork, gave me my account numbers, told me how to set up online banking, and shook my hand, apologizing that it had taken so long.

“Listen,” I said as I was leaving. “Would you like me to pop by tomorrow with another version—you know, just some minor changes, for old times’ sake?”

He laughed and confessed that it would be a little weird the next day, spending a whole afternoon without seeing me in front of his desk.

I went to King’s Square, bought fish and chips from the best place in York, and listened to a decent busker in the sunlight.

Episode 4: Owls

Except it wasn’t over.

When I got home and used my paperwork to set up online banking, it quickly became clear that I needed to receive a debit card to do that. I was told that it would be coming in the mail.

And indeed it did. But not before three or four other mailings—I’ve lost count—that each included other little bits of information. It was like the part in the first Harry Potter book where invitations to Hogwarts keep piling into the Dursley residence. Every day brought some new data barf from Barclays. Here is a list of different numbers that I now have for this account:

• An account number;
• A sort code;
• An IBAN number;
• A Swift code;
• A card number;
• A PIN;
• A passcode (different from PIN);
• A telephone passcode (different from both PIN and passcode);
• A “memorable word.”

Again, to be clear, this is the most basic account: a thing to put money into and pay money out of.

Finally, with all of these numbers in my arsenal, I went back online and was finally able to set up online banking.

Then I opened the list of organizations to whom I owed money—a bus company, the owners of Shakespeare’s houses, the York Glaziers Trust, etc.—so that I could pay our bills.

As soon as I hit the “Add a new payee” button, however, I was notified that I needed a PINsentry device in order to do so, and that one would be mailed to me within five days.

I still do not know what that thing is, but it seems to be a piece of actual hardware into which you insert your card, and it generates yet another number that you need to add a new payee.

Stay tuned.

I also noticed in the fine print, however, that new payees could be added with the Barclays mobile app. I went to download it on my iPhone immediately.

Episode 5: A Walk in the Dark

It turns out that the Barclays Mobile Banking app is not available from the American iTunes Store (several other Barclays apps are, but not the one I needed).

A little more research revealed that there is a way to switch regions for the iTunes Store, so I set about doing that.

To switch regions, however, you need to enter a payment method whose billing address is in the region to which you’re switching. I tried entering my American credit card, but Apple was smart enough to see that I was trying to use an American billing address for a British market.

So I had to switch the payment method to my new Barclays card, then switch regions, then download the Barclays app, and then—because I don’t want to deal with my next album purchase suddenly appearing in my program budget—I switched the payment method and region back to America.

And the Barclays app still worked. All good.

Except it wasn’t.

To activate the app, I needed to enter many of the numbers I listed above, at which point Barclays texted me yet another PIN—a completely new one—which needed to be entered at an ATM.

It was 8:00pm, and the closest ATM was over a mile away. But I saw on Google maps that it was near a grocery store I hadn’t seen yet, so I set off and successfully entered the code. (The grocery store turned out to be a dud.)

When I got home—and I’ll confess that I bought a good bottle of beer along the way—I sat down at my desk to finally pay those bills before the semester began.

As soon as I tried to “Add a payee” in the mobile app, however, I received a message that, for security reasons, this feature would be delayed by up to ten days. Barclays would let me know when it was available.

But I figure that the PINsentry device, whatever that is, should arrive first. Either way, the first serious deadline for payment is slightly over ten days away. So….

From what I can tell, the working assumption of Barclays seems to be that, if an account holder can readily access his or her own funds, then that account is insecure and must be further locked down.

I now have a new label for the writings of Franz Kafka: realism.

And I think that I should begin scheduling appointments now to close the account. If the process of opening it is any indication, that’s going to take a while.