The bank story gets even weirder. By now, we are able to use the account and
everything. What a relief! But as soon as it started to work, we got an
email from the bank manager asking us to come in for a meeting. Uh, oh!
We wondered what we could possibly be doing wrong. Had we transferred in too much money? Were we not writing our checks
correctly? John emailed the manager back
asking what the meeting was about and she said not to worry, it was a general
meeting. So we coordinated our calendars
and John and I took the bus across town to our once conveniently located bank
branch.
It turns out that she set up the meeting to see how we were
doing. John and I had never received
such customer service before! We didn’t
quite know what to make of it. We said
that we were successfully depositing money and writing checks and that we were
satisfied with the account. Then the
manager said that, since we were not permanent residents, we could each open a
free savings account that would give us interest tax free, but there was a
somewhat low limit on the amount of money we could keep in it (but more than we
would need). The accounts wouldn’t cost
us anything and we would get the interest when we closed them. We said why not and ended up walking out of
there with two free interest bearing savings accounts.
She also explained to us why she had asked how much money we
would be transferring into the account from the U.S. It turns out it is an American issue, not a
French one. The U.S. is very controlling
of letting large sums of money leave the country for security reasons (fear of
terrorism). After 911, the regulations increased
dramatically and that causes the bank in France to have to be very careful with
dealing with American money. If we were
from any other country, it wouldn’t be an issue.
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