I feel I have to comment on the arrogance and incompetence that seems to extend across the bank industry in this country.

Upon arrival in New Zealand last September, I was surprised by all the bank charges and fees. You either have to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of having a bank account or accept an account that is only capable of a limited number of transactions per month (whether you use a teller or not!), where you pay about 35c for every transaction after your limit.

Do not expect to earn interest on your account, either. Unless you have a savings account, that is. If you do, expect it to be very easy to put money in to it, but expect to be charged $10 if you want to take it out, instantly crushing any interest you may have been lucky to have earnt that month if an emergency crops up.

I was a canny child and remember once asking my Mum how banks work. She explained to me that they take people’s money, offer a safe house for it until you need it and, by process of profits made from their clever investing, pay you a set rate of interest in exchange for your ‘loan’.

So why don’t New Zealand banks do that? I seem to be paying them for the pleasure!

I have also got a bit of an issue with some of the tellers who work in these haunts. Back in September, I had a cheque made out to me in GB Pounds. I enquired at my bank how to pay it in to my NZ account. They took it, converted it and charged me 5c for the pleasure. Not bad, I thought. So I asked what the maximum allowed amount was and was told cheques equaling up to $500NZD (£192 at time of writing) would be accepted.

Recently, I was having a bit of trouble with a cheque that came to slightly more than $500, so I asked again, just for clarification what the maximum accepted cheque was. This time I was told £100GBP ($242NZD at time of writing). Right, so you’re just making stuff up. Good job, well done!

Then the other day, I popped in to send some money back to the UK, by telegraphic transfer (TT). It was 16.20 and the lady said I was too late. I asked what time the cut off was, given that the branch was open until 17.00. She revealed that cut off was 16.30, but because she was a slow typist she couldn’t do it. I told her it was urgent, at which point she offered that she would be happy to do it, making me feel like I should be extremely grateful to her for her services (“Oh yeah, thanks! I’ve just paid $25 for the service and I still feel guilty for making you have to work on a Friday afternoon!”).

When setting up our mortgage, the advisor opened a cheque (current) account in my partner’s name. She requested that it be closed as we planned to use our joint cheque account to make repayments, so it just was not needed. The forms were signed, highlighting clearly which account we wished to use to make the repayments and we went about our merry life. The day following our first repayment, we checked the account to see no repayment had been made. You can probably guess which account they had tried to take the money from, and therefore which unwanted account was now suddenly overdrawn.

Correctly, they did apologise and offered without prompting to return all incurred fees. I just nodded compulsorily.

Another shovel in the head as far as the banks are concerned is what happened with my partner’s pension transfer from the UK to NZ. To cut a long story short, we arranged a meeting with a pension specialist, decided where to invest the money (quite a lot of GBPs!!) and she signed the transfer forms. We waited. And waited. A new year began. We still didn’t hear anything. She began to change her mind about where she wanted the funds, so she set about enquiring whereabouts in the process things were up to. She emailed the bank’s specialist, who replied with the pinpoint accuracy you would expect from a ’specialist’, saying he wasn’t sure whereabouts things were, but would find out and let her know the next week. Two weeks followed. She emailed her contact over at her UK pension HQ. She quickly replied, saying that the money was still there and she had not received any transfer requests. She told her to leave it there and cancelled the whole thing. Good work Mr. X of New Zealand’s Anonymous Bank, not only have you done NOTHING since she requested you do something, but you have also missed out on thousands of NZDs worth of investment for your company. Please bar this guy’s work internet access.

Is it just me who has this consistent stream of problems with New Zealand’s banks? Are they just out to screw me and make my life difficult? Or are they doing it to every New Zealander as well? I was never entirely at ease with the UK’s banks, but this system seems to grind painfully against me.

The future looks really bright! It really can’t get any dimmer.

What a good son, brother and grandson I thought I was being. My first Christmas living overseas and I had bought, wrapped up and packaged a parcel full of gifts for my family at Christmas. I had even gotten myself down the Post Shop to post it in time for it to arrive in the UK for Christmas!

Never mind that it was a blazing hot day and I could feel the chocolate bar in the package had gone soft. It would soon be sat in the freezing hold of an Airmail plane and would be restored to its former glory. I was definitely doing the right thing by sending these presents – wasn’t I?

Well, 25th December passed and my family still had not received their pressies! In fact, most of January passed. Sorry, all of January. And February. Their parcel was lost. Or stolen, more like. Everyone’s innocent until proven guilty, but it seems that the temptation of three NZ calendars, a DVD and a bar of New Zealand’s finest choc is a wee bit too much of a temptation for some postal workers. “How did they know what was in the package?” you ask. Because it was written on the side of the flipping envelope! On the customs slip. Next time I reckon I’ll just write ‘1/4 litre of urine, some fingernail clippings and last week’s TV guide’ on that thing.

Of course, there is the possibility that the parcel was genuinely lost by some honest accidental method. Such as ‘it fell out the back of the plane’. Or maybe a sniffer dog raided it at the airport, just before the poor creature found out what chocolate does to dogs? Or, at a push, the melted chocolate looked too much like a stool on the x-ray scanner to allow it entry into the UK?

None of it matters, really. The main point is that my family are still awaiting their Christmas bundle of joy and it’s 13th March. And that makes me quite sad, really.

So this Friday 13th will depart and on will come another unfortunate day: St Bloody Valentine’s Day. Great!

It’s that day where we are all told, en masse, to be more romantic to each other. Or get smacked full on in the face! The TV, the radio, newspapers all have their say in it, which is fine and most of it is of good humour and enjoyable. But then, the shops get involved. I mean, they bloody would, wouldn’t they? Even shops that have never had an interest in selling cards want in. You can pick up a so-called ‘Valentine’s gift’ from the fruit and veg market, with a shoe purchase, fish and chips, even a new bathroom order at this time of year can be supplied complete with giant stuffed red heart, ‘cute’ little bunny (and red ribbon to, it seems, strangle the bunny with).

I don’t want to be told when I have to be romantic. Life isn’t scripted out that way. Spending hard earned cash on paper cards printed in China just because everyone else is doing so doesn’t ramp up my quality as a partner. Likewise, paying a February 14th tax on dinner out is equally unappealing. How does my partner feel about this, you ask? Well, she’s fine with it. We’ll still have a great weekend, only we always have great weekends, so we don’t feel the need to put the weekend that happens to fall in the middle of Feb up on a pedestal. Thanks for asking, though.

Of course, if you are a believer of the current world economic downturn (or whatever your local term for it is: general tightness?) then you may wish to go out and spend, spend, spend this weekend. So, by all means, do. Just buy stuff that is useful to you. Swap that $30 box of Belgian chocolates with a carbon footprint the size of a cow for, I dunno, a drill. Yes, you will still be using that jet ski in two weeks time, while the heart-shaped tea bags won’t last that long. The massage oils can go, just a regular can of motor oil will do (for the car, of course). Just be sure to remember: All women like flowers (that is NOT a generalisation, just the truth – some men do too, if the truth be known).

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve got the self-thought and personal intelligence to make this weekend your own. Really, only losers need buy the ‘Perfect Valentine’s In A Bag’ kit and only really very special losers will purchase said kit and then not bother with the instructions. Have a good one!