Upon arriving in Canada we have quickly realised why there
was no massive economic crash within the Canadian economy – the banks charge
for everything. Simply to hold money for you costs anything upwards of $3 a
month.
Furthermore, should you want to use your debit card (the
piece of plastic that is created to make spending easier) to buy something as
simple as food you can either pay an additional $1 per transaction or change
your account to include a set number of transactions, but guess what? This
rockets your monthly fees up too. I am paying the bank to keep, spend and
receive my own money. Well played Canadian Banks, well played.
Coming from the UK this baffles me. The
we-don’t-charge-you-UK, where the majority of bank accounts are free and you
can go to any ATM with any bank and take your money out for free. How good you
guys have it and you don’t realise.
Here, I feel like the little boy in Mary Poppins who just
wants to keep his tuppence. Should it be so hard?
Funnily enough this is not actually the main reason for this
ramble. The cause in actual fact is related to cheques or ‘checks’ as they
spell it here. Lewis receives his pay in the form of good old-fashioned cheques,
which takes an astounding 4-5 business days to clear, causing significant grief
in trying to survive particularly before I started working.
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This past week has been exceptionally tough as we have been
surviving on $35 and as of this moment I believe we have $3 between us, no milk
and minimal food to eat today.
The delightful and very-friendly (the people are actually
lovely at the branch) Scotiabank has decided to hold his pay
cheque for another day, just because they can. We put it in to the bank on Tuesday morning,
a whole week ago, 7 days ago, and it will be EIGHT days by the time the money
is released. That is if they choose to release it tomorrow.
(Please fill in at least a minutes worth of blasphemy here
should you understand our plight)
I am in a rather bad mood and as of this afternoon, I am
firing Scotiabank and their services
and moving to a much more forward thinking bank. Sorry friendly bank workers,
but your banking approach is a joke.
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