I want a bank card!

So... The story about my "integration" and settling down in the Netherlands continues.

After I got my Dutch bank card to pay in the shops and to withdraw money, I found out that with this card it is not possible to pay online. I never had such a card before in Latvia (although I do have a similar Belgian card), so it was new to me.

Whatever - I went to my bank and applied for a credit card (MasterCard). After waiting more than one hour in the queue and filling out the form, last weekend I got to know that... my request has been denied! And in the bank they even couldn't give me a reason why.

What? Denied? For what? I didn't do anything, why wouldn't you give me a simply card so I can shop online (flight tickets, Amazon etc.)

As one Dutchie wrote - "It is probably because you don't have any credit registry in the Netherlands as foreigner. Often they demand Dutch citizenship with a proper creditrecord (no debts!) or explicit proof of high income and/or capital as non Dutch citizen."

Well, let' s try plan B then - apply for visa card as suggested in the bank. The lady just told me to go online on visa.nl and said I could fill the form in English.

Turns out not to be true. At first, the form is only in Dutch. At second, there are so many different visa cards, that I didn't know which one to choose and what is the difference.

Nevertheless - I applied for one of them and let' s hope they will accept at least that! Otherwise my boyfriend will need to continue buying my stuff online...

Banks

Some years ago in Latvia Hansabanka (yes, a bank, which is now called Swedbank) had a very nice idea - if you were waiting in the queue for longer than 20 minutes, you received a free voucher for a cup of coffee/tea/hot drink in a coffee shop (not the Dutch coffeeshop). I remember sometimes waiting in the queue and thinking that I could wait 20min - just to receive a free voucher :)

Today when I was waiting in ABN, I thought about passing this idea to the banks here in the Netherlands. It was not very crowded branch and after hearing the reason why did I come to the bank (not for suggesting the voucher idea) the lady said that I can sit down and wait, adding that there are three people before me.

It took exactly one hour before I got what I wanted! After 50min of waiting the lady said that there are three people working with customers and that I am the next in the queue. So did everybody really need 1 hour for discussing their issue with the bank or did they all (by accident) wanted something very complicated like a loan?! For me it took 10 minutes...

Bank account

After getting a SOFI number, my next step was trying to get a Dutch bank account. As it is not possible to do it if you do not have a SOFI number, before I did not have it and was able to obtain it only now.

Bank No. 1 - As I have ING card from Belgium (where apparently you do not need anything apart from the passport), my first idea was to get ING bank account also here, but a colleague of mine told that ING here are not "expat friendly", so this option was left out.

Bank No. 2 - ABN/Amro. As I have heard that one needs an appointment to open a bank account and you can't just walk in the bank, I called to their customer service line to make an appointment. Unfortunately after trying a couple of times I gave up as it seemed that nobody in the customer service line wanted to speak with me...

Bank No. 3 - Rabobank, suggested by the same colleague. They picked up the phone immediately and were kind enough to make an appointment for me. In the end of the conversation the guy was explaining me all the documents I need to take with me for the appointment.

- ID / passport - no problem.

- SOFI number - no problem.

- Employment contract - wait, wait! I do not have it! (I thought that my internship contract will not be taken into account)

No contract - no bank account in Rabobank. Damn it!

After posting the situation in my Facebook status, I got several suggestions, so I decided to try my luck again and go to ABN/Amro myself. That seemed to solve the problem as they were kind enough to give me a bank account just with my passport and SOFI number. Thank you!