Our French Bank Blows

If you ever need to open a bank account in France, here's a little bit of free advice: CIC is the banking equivalent of that homeless guy on the corner of 47th and Madison who's always shouting about how the government wiretaps toaster ovens to monitor carb consumption and that grapefruit somehow have it in for him. Neither of them make much sense, both will drive you crazy if you deal with them long enough, and neither should be trusted with your money.

Here's the deal: we've recently had a bit of fun purchasing the negatives to our wedding pictures from our photographer. It's been almost a year and a half since the wedding, and we still haven't finalized our wedding album or paid the photographer for his services, so he's understandably a little miffed whenever I deal with him on the phone. Still, I think that his price of €3000 for the negatives (as good as the pictures may be) falls somewhere between delusional and extortionistic.

Anyway, I was supposed to meet up with the photog last night to pay for the wedding album and fork over the money we owed him (a grand total of €2116.50). Just to make things convenient, he insisted that I pay the entire amount in cash. I knew it would be a bit of a pain to take out that much at the bank, but considering our delay in paying his bill, I figured that I would do the nice thing and help him avoid some taxes.

Yesterday I grabbed my checkbook and left the apartment early for a morning meeting. I was tied up until about two, and then I headed straight for the bank without stopping for lunch. I went to the main branch nearest my office and waited in line for about five minutes until I got to the front desk, behind which sat a badly balding doughball of a man. I told Poppin Fresh that I needed to withdraw €2250, and he looked at me as if I had just asked him to fork over one of his (very small) testicles as a garnish for a dessert I was going to make later that evening. "We don't have any tellers here," PF huffed. "You'll have to go to your home branch" (which, incidentally, happens to be all the way across town in the 16th arrondissement, near my old offices).

I was trying to decide whether it would be more appropriate to ask him (a) how in the hell a main branch could possibly have ZERO tellers and (b) whether he had any allergies I should tell the paramedics about when they arrived, when instead I decided to go for secret option (c): ask him if there was another branch nearby that did have tellers. You see, here's the catch with French bureaucracy (and CIC in particular): customer service personnel will never give you the most helpful response, even if it would be the most logical thing in the world for them to do so. That's why, instead of telling me that there was a branch five minutes away with tellers who could help me, his immediate response was to send me back to my own branch across town. Think of it as the client-service equivalent of getting fisted, but without lube.

After mentally envisioning a series of full-on collisions between Doughboy's head and a 20-lb sledgehammer, I made for the other branch as fast as I could. I hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch and was getting a bit of a headache, so I wanted to get in and out as soon as possible. When I arrived, I went straight to the nearest teller, a mouse of a woman with no memorable features other than an intense air of boredom and disinterest. When I whipped out my checkbook and told her that I needed to withdraw €2250, her lips pursed a bit before she asked me with what branch my account was located. I clenched my fists and told her that my home branch is in the 16th. More lip pursing by her; more fist clenching by me. "Well," Minnie told me, "you can only withdraw €1500 from any branch other than your home branch." Fist turning knuckles white. "And in order to withdraw up to €1500 you need prior authorisation from your branch." Palms bleeding from digging fingernails. "So," I managed to grate between clenched teeth, "you're saying that even though I have more than enough in my account, and even though this is a CIC branch, and even though I have my checkbook here, I can't withdraw more than €1500?" "Mmmm, yep," Minnie said with her first and only smile of our encounter.

The rest of the ordeal is a bit hazy after that, since a combination of low blood sugar and surging levels of adrenaline limited my grasp of the events. I do remember, however, that the line behind me was mighty long when I left, since Minnie made not one but two separate authorization requests to my branch, took a little trip to her supervisor to confirm that my driver's license was a valid form of ID, and gave me several fun administrative forms to complete.

This isn't the first time we've had trouble with our bank (for example, we had a fun time in Greece when it turned out that we couldn't withdraw more than €600 from a non-CIC ATM and desperately needed cash to pay for our hotel), but I'm pretty sure that it's going to be the last. I've decided to vote our displeasure with our feet and switch banks ASAP, if not sooner. I know that it's a huge hassle to do, since we have a bunch of bills that are automatically paid from our current account, but if I have to deal with another CIC employee who stands between me and my money, I think I'm going to lose it and go all Bruce Lee on his ass.