More Fun With ChinaTrust and Bank of America: The Madness of International Transfers in Taiwan

I recently wrote a blog about banking with ChinaTrust and Bank of America.  So, I sent the money transfer from Bank of America to ChinaTrust; it cost me $35US ($1200NT).  BoA’s policy states that the money will arrive within two days, which it did; I checked online and confirmed it was delivered  then went to my CT branch to check my balance.  I was told the money was at the bank, but not in my account, due to a lack of confirmation.

In order to get the money to show up in my account, CT has to send a confirmation to BoA in Taipei for the money to be released.  It’s classic Taiwan-style bureaucracy, but I honestly don’t know how common it is – but BoA in the USA has no knowledge of the practice.  They said, “No, the money is there, delivered yesterday.”  So, it appears that BoA USA send the money to BoA Taiwan, who then refuses to send the money to CT without my confirming that I am who I say I am.

Why is this so stupid?

Because no matter who I am, the money will still come.  This isn’t some security prevention system – even if I sent the money to the wrong account in Taiwan, BoA wouldn’t know who I really intended to send it to.  It’s just another pointless hoop to jump through, where BoA Taiwan gets to charge me an extra $200NT ($8US), and waste even more of my time.  If I knew it would be this hard, I would have just gone up to Taipei and directly removed my money there, instead of going through all this nonsense.

If anyone is looking to contact BoA Taipei, here’s the numbers:

02.27.289.849

02.27.289.745

6 thoughts on “More Fun With ChinaTrust and Bank of America: The Madness of International Transfers in Taiwan

  1. Pingback: ChinaTrust Banking Policies « jsphfrtz's weblog

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  4. HAHA now I can! That was weird.
    So my question is: I think I want to essentially close my Australian account and transfer my savings to a Taiwan account that I will set up once I move to Taiwan, as I have no reason to go back to Australia for a long time. IS this a good idea? I just want to have all my savings in one place (no multiple account fees)

    Would a western union transfer be the most cost efficient way to transfer into a TW bank account?

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