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I want money. That's what I want.

In Zürich, apartments are really expensive. On top of that, the customary security deposit is 3 months' rent. So we need the security deposit plus our first month's rent up front.

We knew this when we left. We had the money saved up. The only question was, "How do we get it to Switzerland?" So, I went and talked to someone at the bank myself before we left. She wouldn't stop trying to sell me crap I didn't need, but she did tell me that I'd be able to do an international wire transfer. We visited again together, and a very friendly customer service person told us that international wire transfers were NOT possible unless we were in the bank in the US. I called the customer service number to resolve the discrepancy, and was told that it was possible, but I'd have to set up a PIN before I made my first transfer.

I decided to just wait until we arrived and had a local bank account. Then, I'd try it and see what happened.

It turns out that there's a FOURTH option -- I was supposed to set up a wire transfer agreement before I left. That has to be done in person. Because that didn't happen before we left (because NEITHER of the people we talked to mentioned it), we can't transfer the money via wire transfer now. So, our options are either

  1. Visit the ATM every day for the next two weeks and withdraw up to our daily limit
  2. Play the cash advance game with our debit and credit cards. 
  3. Visit a money exchange website and give a third party all of the account numbers for both our old and new checking accounts. (Yeah, that sounds safe!)
I am so utterly not impressed with my bank right now.


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