crazyscot

You folks back in the UK have it relatively easy with banks. Here, we are paying a $5 monthly fee for our current accounts, a $10 annual fee for our VISA debit cards (note: EFT cards are free, but can't be used abroad or online), and then there's the small matter of transaction fees. To set up an automated payment [standing order] or direct debit? Five of your finest New Zealand dollars. A bill payment costs 50c to make, or $2.50 if you do it via a teller. To withdraw from another bank's ATM? $1, possibly plus a fee if that bank charges one for non-customers to withdraw. A non-NZ ATM? $7.50, plus 2.25% forex loading.

This morning I went to withdraw some cash from my current account. This is thankfully free, as it's covered by my monthly subscription. The ATM hummed and hawed for a while, printed me a receipt showing that I had made the withdrawal, didn't give me the money, told me that my card might be damaged, returned the card, and promptly went out of service. Thankfully, despite being a Sunday, the adjacent branch was open, so I went to a teller with a glum face. He showed me that the system had generated an immediate credit for the failed withdrawal, checked my debit card (brand new! only used for 2 transactions!) and found it didn't read properly in their on-the-counter reader. Great. So we have ordered a replacement card. This would have cost me $15 (and the over-the-counter withdrawal 25c per $100) but they waived it because it's obviously their problem.

It doesn't bode well for the reliability of their system. Nor does the fact that the two transactions I made using that card yesterday have been posted to my savings account. Now, here in NZ you can link a single card up to a current (cheque), savings and credit account; before entering your PIN the keypad asks you to select which account. I am 99% sure I selected current, and the receipts for those transactions confirm this. Something funny is going on, so I've emailed my contact at the bank to ask, essentially, wtf?

And then this evening I went to set up an automated payment for the rent on our house. Hahahaha. No, that's more than my online limit (which I don't think I've ever been notified of) and I have to do it via a branch. Sigh! Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, back to the bank I go...

We were in town this weekend sorting out appliances and furnishings and so forth, and paused to stickybeak at some of the repair work. The change across the city is quite marked: where we are in the NW there is very little damage, just the occasional bracing here and there, whereas in the north-central there is enough rubble and dust about that the wind trivially whips up clouds of the stuff. (We haven't been into the eastern suburbs, which we hear are in a very sorry state.) We were struck by the amount of damage and destruction in the central city, which is still partially cordoned off. Some of the main streets have fencing taking sections out of the traffic lanes because of unsafe buildings or walls.

We visited not the central cathedral, but the Catholic basilica which is outside of the cordons. The building has been shored up in a MacGyverish fashion with shipping containers and what looks like bales of hay; they are taking the dome down gradually, presumably to keep it safe like they have done with a number of church spires around town.

As we walked around a couple of blocks, there were a number of rubble sites and some further red-stickered buildings with scaffolds and shoring. Portaloos here and there indicated a lack of functional sewerage; yet a couple of blocks to the south were a couple of supermarkets carrying on as if nothing had happened and one of the main thoroughfares.

Kia kaha, Christchurch.