Israeli Bureaucracy

I went to the bank a couple of days ago to find out why I was paying so many fees. When I came to Israel, everyone warned me about the fees, but I had no idea.

I can check my balance online, and there are usually mysterious charges with names like: FC.TRNS.COM for 14.28 shekels or F/CCY COM 01 for 25.39 shekels. I check my balance once a week or so and there is usually one of these fees. The latest, which prompted my trip to the bank were CARD GURNT FEE for 42 shekels and SNIFOMAT-PEF for 49 shekels. (A snifomat is an ATM, it's one of our favorite Hebrew words. Say it out loud with the emphasis on the first syllable and you'll see why. Try saying it to friends and see what they think.)

I found one customer service rep who helped me with another small transaction and when I asked about fees, he just shook his head and pointed to another rep two cubicals down.

After waiting ten minutes for her to finish up with her customer, I asked her about the fees and she pulled up my account. Turns out that there is a yearly charge for having an ATM card - Snifomat - PEF. Then there is a charge for having insurance on your ATM card - Card Gurnt fee - so if it gets stolen or lost and someone uses it, I'm not responsible for the charges. Note, there is a charge for card replacement as well.

FC.TRNS.COM is a charge for depositing an American check, which we do to get money from our account in the states. Then F/CCY COM 01 is the charge for converting the dollars on the check to shekals. Mind you, the reason we chose this bank was that their website tells us that they have eliminated "Managment" fees and have a single charge per month. Which they do, in addition to all the other charges. The Pymt/trans pkg is for our monthly fee.

But then why, I asked, is there is a charge labeled DEBIT. That, she said as she started laughing, is the fee for having foreign currency in your account. What Foreign currency? I asked. Well, it turns out that there is a two week waiting period while the check clears, so during that time, they consider the check that I can't access to be foreign currency that they are holding for me, and charge me a fee for it.

I told her it was ok for her to laugh, it wasn't her money. She said she was sorry, but the banks here are really greedy and the fees are totally ridiculous. Now that is good customer service! And to top it off, she told me that because Debra was a full time student, we might have the wrong classification (?!?) for our account, and we might be eligible for a better exchange rate and no fees for part of the conversion if we do a wire transfer. Note that this is the same woman who set up our account six months ago and told us that wire transfers were really, really expensive.

This is why I like Israeli Bureaucracy: they keep changing the rules to keep it interesting.