Zurich - Admin Issues

 

Attacking my Finances

I wanted to sort out a lot of admin when I was over in Zurich, but it all failed miserably.

Here’s the list:

1. Change the address on my Swiss bank account

I know that I have to pay ridiculously high charges to keep my Swiss bank account when I’m living abroad, but I’d decided it was probably cheaper than transferring the money to my UK bank account. With Brexit, sterling is likely to fall and I’d lose money by transferring it.

You’d think it would be easy to change your address, particularly if you appear in person with your passport and bank card. But no! They advised me against it, saying the charges would be very high. I said I didn’t mind, so then they informed me I’d need to close the account and open a new one. What?! All I wanted to do was change my address - why is this so difficult?

I went back into the bank and decided to say I was just moving within Switzerland (I’ll just use a friend’s address, I thought). But they wanted proof of the address (and also said there was a note on file that I’d moved to Egypt – whoops!).

In the end I gave up. I’m not earning, so I wasn’t sure a new application would be accepted. I need to keep the bank account open until my credit cards are paid off anyway…

2. Change the address on my Swiss credit card

It’s a credit card with Swiss airlines. They fly all over the place. So surely it’s okay to have an address that’s not in Switzerland? Apparently not.

They too said I had to close the credit card. The expiry date was end of August anyway and my new one had got lost in the Egyptian post (typical). I said they had to let me use it until September 1st as I was using the card to pay for everything. With the pandemic, everything has to be paid contactless, so my Swiss credit card was a lifeline (my bank card was out of date). It would be daft to pay in sterling when I had money in the bank over here. That wasn’t a problem and they said they’d phone me in case they found a way of me keeping the credit card.

When I realized I couldn’t keep my bank account, I decided I may as well just cancel the credit card for Sept 1st. I phoned but they said I couldn’t cancel the card until they’d phoned me back as originally agreed. Gawd.

They phoned me back when I was on the train. I’m not comfortable on the phone at the best of times. We agreed I would cancel the card, but I forgot to ask about the associated travel insurance that went with the card. Yet another phone call before I could sort things out. Sigh.

And then there was a final call when they wanted to double-check that I'd keep my bank account open long enough for the direct debit to go through to pay my credit card bill. Ha ha. If they only knew how much I'd been joking all week about doing a runner!

3. Cancel my Half-Tax railcard

It was a fortnight before my half-fare railcard was due to be renewed. I asked for it to be cancelled. Not possible. You have to cancel one month beforehand. I said I no longer lived in Switzerland and hadn’t received the letter asking me to cancel. Still not possible. 

It’s all a huge con. It’s all electronic. All they have to do is change a date on their system. Why does this need a month’s notice? It’s not to do with making more money from those who leave it too late, is it? Surely not?

4. Change my address on my UK credit card

This was easier to do phoning from Switzerland when I’d bought an unlimited calls SIM card than from Egypt. This actually went fairly easily.

However, I registered the address on my credit card without a postcode. They don’t use postcodes in Egypt. But Amazon won’t accept an address without a postcode, so I made one up. But now the two addresses conflict and I’m unable to make online payments. 

I need to phone the credit card company again, now from Egypt, but I ran out of money today trying to get it sorted (in part because my first lot of phone credit was automatically swallowed on renewing my bundle instead of towards calls, which is not what I wanted to happen – I hate phones!!!). It will likely cost me around ten quid just to do this (I'm having to spend money in order to spend it, how ridiculous is that!). Ugh.

I will speak about happier things next week!