How I set up my bank account

First of all, before you decide to go to the bank, you have to ensure that you have all the necessary documents. As an international student, you need a passport, admission letter and confirmation of address. The latter two can be mixed into one letter, which was also in my case.

Having received the confirmation letter I decided to go to the bank. I thought it would be as easy as in the Czech Republic, just pop into the bank and set up an account. Mistake number one. In order to set up an account you have to make an appointment. So not knowing this fact, I entered the bank and went to personal banking section where I was told that if I wanted to set up an account I would have to come the following morning and if I was happy I would get the appointment the other day.

Banking hours start at nine o’clock so I set off the other day in advance so that I could get there by 8:50. Mistake number two. I had to leave the college really in advance as I did not have my bike. Even so, when I came to the bank at quarter to nine there was already queue of about thirty people in front of me. I thought to myself I would have to come again and even more early on Monday as the following day was Sunday. Fortunately, when I got to the list of appointments I got one at 13:30.

Relieved, I went to the city centre to sort other things out in the meantime. Finally, I came on time for my appointment, waited another hour, as there were a lot of people, and then got the account. Well, not really. My account was set but I did not have the account number. Before I left the banker told me that he would call me either that or the following day to tell me my account details.

On Monday, when I returned from matriculation ceremony, I found someone had called on my phone, which I had left in my room so that it should not bother me. So all I was left with was a voicemail which I decoded as something like: ‘Hello Tomas, it’s Mark from bank, I have your bank details so you can pick them up, I will be in the ground floor.’ Mistake number three. So I set off to the bank for the second time. After I came, I explained to the assistant that Mark had called me and that he had my bank details. However, the man who the assistant brought with her was not the banker I had dealt with on Saturday. After that banker brought me my banking details he also explained me that my banker was not Mark, the man I was talking to, but Marcus, other banker who I had already recognised at that time.

Now I had a bank account and its number, so I could send the money from the Czech Republic. But even after three days I still did not have my Online Banking details. Even so I decided to log in. Mistake number four. After four unsuccessful attempts to log in I was locked out of my account and I had to reset the password. Hence, I had to go to bank the following day. Having explained everything, I had to call to customer service centre where I managed to have a new password sent. The same day, when I came back to college, I found the old password in my pigeonhole.

The last mistake remaining. Within three day I received my new password. So I logged in, happy to pay my college bill which was due in five days. Here we are, mistake number five. I was really fool to think that I would not encounter other problems. When I wanted to send the payment, a window saying: ‘You need PINsentry to send money to new payee’ popped up. For those who do not know, PINsentry is a special device that generates authorisation codes for sending a payment. And I did not have it. Finally, I had to go to bank for the fourth time to send the payment from there.

That’s it. This was my story of getting an account and problems using it. Well, not really. The very last problem came in the bank. I wanted to be quick so I used cash machine to send the money. When I clicked on ‘Send’, another pop-up appeared saying: ‘This amount of money exceeds the limit for this machine´, so I had to queue for regular counter. But after that, the money was finally sent.