Today I will talk about the Nordea bank experience.
My boyfriend (A.) had a Nordea bank account and that's why I thought it would be more practical to have the same... Well..
On September, when I was still staying in Kerava, a small city-suburb of Helsinki, I went to the Nordea bank to make a bank account so I can transfer some money from Spain. The woman that was attending me asked me if I am a student or working (a question that repeat you all the time in Finland, even for yoga lessons). I said no, neither of them, and then she told me that then it is not possible. She didnt ask me where I am from, but she just told me that if I am a foreigner and dont belong to one of these categories I cant have a bank account.
I couldnt believe it so when I went home I called their customer care service. They told me that...in some offices they accept to do it with a passport and some not. So that I dont spend my life going from bank office to bank office to see which one accepts in Helsinki, I decided to wait to have my registration number so that it would be more easy.
When I got a registration number and this basic contract I went again to the bank, this time in Kamppi and with A.'s mother. The employer asked to see my contract. She was like...hmm, I dont see here how much you gain exactly...hmm... and...here it doesnt say...hm... After a while I got kind of angry and then I told her-in Finnish: Look, I got this job and they want to pay me. For that they need my bank account. Or you do it or another bank will do it instead.
Then the lady got...OK, no niin. And then she finally did it!
She told me though that I cant have still an internet access to it until I have some money inside. Then, I transfered my money from Spain, and went back. BUT, this time they told me that.. we are sorry but you can t have internet access before you get your first salary....! So...they want me to go to the bank everytime I want to do something until the end of the month that the company will pay me this ... one week of work?? Well, this seems to be what they want.
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Okay Nordea is the huge evil corporation - don't put your money there :) Our family had a problem with them when burglars came to our house an found a credit card and then from a different room the pin number. I know we should have burnt it but it said - keep in a safe place.
Well Nordea naturally wouldn't give us the money stolen (around 5000 euros) Even though a semi-official panel of judges instructed them. Then we had to sue them - luckily we got the consumer association's lawyer to do the case for us for free.
The lower courts told Nordea to pay. They wouldn't but appealed to the higher courts! They lost eventually after 5 years. But talking about bullying! 5 years and probably close to 100000 euros in lawyer expenses for them a small sum of 5000 euros.
They just wanted to make a point: If you want your rights - we are going to make it as hard and expensive as possible for you to get them - because they have infinite time and money.
Anyway - we now put our money in Handelsbanken - a small upstart bank here in Finland that has personal service and no lines. They have to be nice to us because they want new customers :)
My first bank account was with Nordea. I opened it 5,5 years ago without any problems. Then they started to change their rules. At first I just accepted that but then there was the day I had stood over an hour waiting in line at the bank at Senatorintori to fix a problem with the not-working credit card. When it finally was my turn they told me that they wouldn't accept my drivers licence anymore even so it looks pretty much like the Finnish one. They only would accept a Finnish id or my passport. Even so I had been a customer for over 4 years they completely refused to even look at the problem. I had to go home, get the passport, wait in line again and only then they were willing to check the problem.
They send huge amounts of advertisement per post and notifications per internet banking, but they had been unable to use either channel for informing their foreign customers that they would only accept the passport from then on.
When it was my second turn the guy their told me that I had used my credit limit on the card and that was the reason it wasn't working. He then more or less scolded me for trying to violate my credit card limit. And then he called me a liar when I told him that I hadn't used the card in two month.
I was so angry that I went home, got all my papers and went to the next bank to open a new account. It was Handelsbanken at Dianapuisto. They were really nice there. They accepted the drivers licence and actually recognized me each time I visited their office (so I didn't even need the id). I immediately also got a credit card (no waiting period). Compared to the second-class treatment at Nordea it was wonderful.
Last winter I decided to buy a house and for that I needed a credit. I checked with pretty much all banks except Nordea. The best offer was from Danskebank so I decided to switch one more time. Well, I'm not sure it was a good idea. While their mortgage department is quite ok and helpful, downstairs with the normal bank tellers is probably worse than Nordea. The teller actually even called their most basic package a foreigner package because just those don't fulfil the requirements for the next package. Even so I had been in the country for 5 years working in the same job and was only switching from one local bank to another they refused me internet banking. She told me I first had to transfer my salary for the next 3 months to them. My mortgage guy the next day overruled her and gave me the internet banking so that I would be able to sign contract papers without having to come to his office.
It's now so that I try to skip the normal bank tellers as much as possible because they tend to make me feel like dirt. I don't even want to know what they are doing with the non-EU citizens.
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