Blog - Just escalate it
Just escalate it
Today I needed to get my Mizuho bank account moved from one branch to another, because the place I work at requires employees to all have an account at the same branch. When I went to the new branch, I was first told at the reception that I needed to close my old account and then to open a new account. So far so good, but in order to open a new account I would need to have an inkan (印鑑, name stamp). Believe it or not I've survived in Japan for almost 7 years without an inkan, and I don't really want one.
I asked why I was able to create my original bank account 6 years ago just with my signature, and they called the boss to come have a chat with me! I was then told that's because Fuji Bank (the original bank where I signed up, but was later merged with other banks into Mizuho Bank) had a different policy. Fair enough, but "I've been a loyal customer and I'm not all that enthusiast about getting an inkan just for switching branch..." and I got what I wanted! The boss pulled out a very simple form titled 「取引店変更依頼書」 ("Branch change order form") (4 hits on Google, for other banks only!). This has the disadvantage of taking about 2 weeks, but the big advantage (IMHO) of getting your automatic payments (credit cards, mobile phone,...) to follow-up automatically.
To sum up, usually they get you to close your old account, open a new account, and let you call all of your credit card companies yourself, but they really can do all of this for you even though it will take 2 weeks. I'm curious whether it will really take that long though.
By the way the service at the reception, where they ask you what you want to do and give you a number to the right counter, was really mediocre and stubborn. I had three oldish ladies after me! "No you can't just move your account from another branch." "Go buy an inkan at the department store on the other side of the street." Once the boss came, everything went smoothly.
If you're not in a hurry, just ask for the boss.
Posted on October 1, 2007 at 19:31 | Tweet
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>>If you're not in a hurry, just ask for the boss.
It should be: If you _are_ in a hurry, ask for the boss.
If you had taken the other way it would have last much longer and you might have even lost your creditability. Soon they had told you, that you do not have a credit history and you can only get 10000 YEN a day from your account until you are a trusted customer again. In Germany canceling your account also had meant that they had asked you for some "closing fee".
Escalating was very clever.
Best
Markus
Posted by Markus Kreisel on October 2, 2007 at 18:26
Good point! That's something I hadn't even thought about!
I don't know if they somehow follow-up credit history when doing the closing-opening thing, that would be a good question.
They do this all at once for you, but I think you have to fill-out a long form like when opening a brand new account. The form I had to fill was very simple, like: name, address, old branch, old account #.
Posted by Patrick on October 2, 2007 at 19:05
A finally the commenting system works, but now, I forgot what I wanted to say hehe. Is it actually possible to create your own inkan?? That would be wicked :P
Posted by Papigiulio on October 2, 2007 at 20:36
Being robbed by a bank is much more common than a bank being robbed. So always check if all your money is still on your account after you left the bank :-)
Best
Markus
Posted by Markus Kreisel on October 3, 2007 at 00:30