I have just had a bad experience with Westpac Bank. This is a bank that claims to be "Proudly supporting Australians for over 196 years"...if you live in Australia that is, and you are not an expat anywhere...if you can contact them during Sydney hours of operation...if you can be contacted on an Australian number.
If you would like to know details about what happened to me to prompt this post, stay tuned. I raised a complaint with Westpac yesterday morning and they have just under 24 hours remaining to respond. I will be posting the full story tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some sage expat banking advice and tips i learned due to this incident.
Expat banking - 5 Lessons Learned
1 - If you are going to be an expat or will be travelling for a long period of time and would like take your credit card from home with you, make sure your bank has the support infrastructure in place. For example, check the customer support times, if the international support number is different to regular local support etc.
2 - As much as you like your bank, it is worthwhile taking out another secondary credit card just in case you run into issues with your main one. Your loyalty and clean credit history will, apparently, mean nothing to the banks so there is no reason to not have an alternative.
3 - Review the bank's support, a simple Google search will show if anyone has encountered any issues with support while living/travelling in another country. I'm sure I'm not the only one to write about my negative experience.
4 - Make sure your account details are up to date and that your international number is your primary number. If this cant be done, make sure there is a note on your account to ask all communications go to your international number.
5 - Find out about your bank's policies in various scenarios. Not only will this tell you if they have good support, it gives you an understanding of what you need to do if disaster strikes.
If you have any other expat banking tips, I'd love to hear them, drop me an email, comment or tweet me :)
