The Bank Card Saga

A century or two ago this country ruled a vast, global empire. I think I now understand how they lost it: bureaucracy.

The Luther Center program makes use of one of the large banking conglomerates here for its financial services needs. This corporation will remain nameless here, to protect the guilty.

Students pay tuition in dollars back home. Luther's Center for Global Education buys Pounds when the exchange rates are favorable, and deposits those in an account here. The director then accesses that account to pay the students' tuition at the local university, to buy food, to arrange trips, pay guest speakers, and take care of other necessities.

Britain is a bank card society. People here use their debit cards routinely for nearly everything. The cards are different than those in the U.S., which have a magnetic strip on the back and are pulled through a reader. These "swipe" cards are considered quite archaic over here, and to present one is instant admission of being an American. Many places of business no longer even have the capacity to process a swipe card. Fortunately, ATMs still take them, which is important if the tank was just filled with petrol and it's discovered the station can't take the American credit card (it happened).

The British (and indeed, all of Europe and much of the rest of the world) now use the "chip and PIN" card. This card has a computer chip embedded in the plastic. It isn't "swiped" across the reader, instead it is put in, sits there while the computer in the machine talks to the computer in the card, and then one is asked to enter a 4-digit PIN. This has lots of advantages: No need to sign, much less paper, it's faster, the chips aren't easily damaged as magnetic strips are, and they say it's more secure and less open to identity theft.

So it is vitally important for the Director to have a chip & PIN card to access the program's account. My predecessor and I went to the bank to sign the papers on my first day here, seven weeks ago. In most civilized countries on the planet, the card would be received in the mail within a week.

The bank very efficiently canceled my predecessor's card in about two weeks. This was a mixed blessing, because even though the card was not in my name, I knew the PIN and was still able to use it to access the account -- until I couldn't. Now we were pretty much cut off from all Luther funds. A few weeks after that, the process moved around to where my signature got attached to the account. Now I could go to the bank and sign the old fashioned way to draw cash to pay some bills. Not ideal, but at least the bills were getting paid.

I became an Ugly American at one point when they wanted to charge me £23 (about $38) as a fee to pay a rather large bill because I did not have a card -- the card I didn't have because they were so slow in providing it! The helpful staff at our local branch helped me file a formal complaint. I received no less than four polite letters telling me they were investigating and/or apologizing, but still no card.

When the card finally arrived, it needed to be activated. At home we call an 800 number and the card gets activated immediately. Here one either mails a receipt (the Royal Mail is another story for another time) or one sends a text message from a mobile (cell) phone. Then it takes another 48 hours. Next, one has to have a PIN. It was sent in a separate envelope, as in the U.S., but instead of just being printed on paper, it had "security features." Turn the page over, lift the tab, scratch off the silver stuff, replace the tab, turn it over again, read the PIN. I'm an educated person, I followed the directions. I couldn't read it. Trip to the bank.

So now, after seven weeks of hassle and grief, I am finally the proud owner of my own chip & PIN card for the Luther account in UK. I'm very fortunate. Seven weeks is a modern Olympic record. My predecessor didn't get her card until October last year. And the sun never sets on the British Empire.