Banking in Costa Rica

 

This picture is the day before Costa Rica imposed lock down rules due to Covid in 2020. I remember the security guard made me remove my N95 mask! Spending the day here today. Le sigh!

The thing about the banking systems here is sometimes frustrating. If you're Canadian and have access to Scotiabank you have it a tad easier than most expats because you can open a Scotiabank account in Canada and use it here. Same bank. Those of us from the USA don't have it that nice. Why? Couple of things. First, only two banks in this country have anything like the FDIC in the USA - the two government backed ones - Banco Nacional and Banco Costa Rica. The others are not, and that can matter a lot in a place where financial institutions can falter and close with no notice, taking your hard earned dolares with them. BAC is not government-backed, but they are huge, so little chance of losing your money. They are the only one besides Scotiabank or a credit union I might consider.

Keep in mind also that Costa Rica is where red tape goes to die. They are experts at it! The more incompetent the employee, the more red tape they pull out, and the longer a correct solution/resolution takes.

But with that surety at the two government banked banks comes some petty annoyances. We deal with Banco Nacional, but are in the process of moving large swathes of our investments to a credit union here. Credit unions are also financially backed by the government. Just like in the States. We've gotten fed up with Banco Nacional. A few years ago we tried to move some of our excess funds here into our USA based broker. I brought the printed page right from the brokerage house with instructions in English and Spanish of how it had to be sent. All the correct information. They flubbed it up three times, charging us a wire fee every time they screwed up and refusing to admit they screwed up. Substantial amount of money stuck out there in banking cyberspace until someone finally, miraculously, decided to follow the instructions to the letter. I was livid!

The newest mess we're dealing with is me attempting to replace my expired bank cards. While we were in the States three of mine expired. One for my personal retirement account. one for our joint dollar account and another for the joint colones. I have other accounts there, but I only use the atm bank cards for these three. As soon as we got home I was in the bank, showing the sweet young gal at the multiplatforma (customer service) that I needed to get updated cards. Showed her which accounts. She said come back in a week. Hmph!

Here they do not mail the cards. We did have a private banker for two years right before the bank decided to move him elsewhere. The whole private banker thing was nice, for stuff like this we'd call him and in two days swing by to pick up the cards, bypassing the always "Lord of the Flies"-esque customer service. 

Not that it really matters I guess, since I'm visibly disabled I get to bypass the line. The problem being that many working there don't seem to care if they resolve your problem or add to the mess.

Picked up the new cards last week. I asked a couple of times which card went with which account to no avail. Left with the cards and stopped at the local Chinese store that sells pretty much anything you need cheaper than most places. Pull out card to pay only to get the message that there was zero dollars or colones in that account. You talk about embarrassing! Luckily I happen to have a raft of cards from the credit union. Later that same day we went to the bank atm to try and sort out which card went where. Discovered two cards were identical, drawing funds from my retirement investments. The other one was linked to a brand new account with no money in it!

So this was all wrong! I did not open a new account! Which blew my mind, I'd spelled out clearly which accounts I was renewing the atm cards for, even handing her my expired ones, and she still managed to mess it up. Went to the bank this afternoon, preparing for war if I had to and......... the nice young man I talked to straightened it out, linking all three cards to the right accounts. I just used all three on three different transactions and it is right! All is happy here in my Ticolandia. 

Now if it would just go ahead and rain! We're in rainy season and have only had a few sprinkles. The heat index today was 105F. It's usually cooler than that in rainy season. They are forecasting heavy rains tonight and cooler weather. I hope so because I sweat soaked all of my clothing.