|
Post by Carol on Dec 21, 2007 6:59:09 GMT 1
I think you've struck unlucky with RBA. I use them too for my own accounts and also for many of my clients. They speak English, have internet banking in english, so two upsides. The biggest downside is that they make up new rules and regulations every month or so, each time deliberately making it harder to set up accounts or just transact normal banking business. They never warn or advise their customers of the changes, they just wait until you want to do something you've done 100 times before and announce some new extra document. I don't think they want the foreigners business to tell the truth, even though they are in many ways best set up to deal with us. There are other downsides too: their Split main office is horrible to reach except on foot, not to mention ridiculously long slow moving queues (who has got half an hour to waste standing in a bank before being served?) We tried PBZ for a while but the lack of bi-lingual staff causes problems. Has anyone tried the other banks? How about Erste Bank?
|
|
|
Post by rijekafan on Dec 22, 2007 0:22:05 GMT 1
Raifeissen bank refuses to give me a cash advances on my visa card because they say its not a "Croatian" Visa card. This is ridiculous but they insist, so I get cash advances from PBZ Bank. The PBZ in Rijeka and Losinj are the best banks I have dealt with and they speak English. I have no idea how good they are in Dalmatia or Istria. I will be transferring to them when I get back. My accountant likes Erste Bank my ex girlfriend swore by Zagrebacka. I think it all depends on the branch one uses. In terms of business banking, the myriad charges also have to be taken into account All the banks in Rijeka have English speaking staff. I guess the same would apply in Istria. It sounds harder to find them in Dalmatia.
|
|
|
Post by Carol on Dec 22, 2007 8:22:37 GMT 1
there are 2 branches of PBZ for business accounts in Split. One has a great, really helpful english speaking woman who consequently always has a long queue of people in front of her. The other has no queue, doesn't speak English and if asked to do any work or give any advice, she lapses into some very strong anti-foreigner (not just anti-English) sentiments and then she might or might not do her job.
|
|
|
Post by rijekafan on Dec 24, 2007 2:04:30 GMT 1
When I have had problems with other banks I complain to the boss and usually things change. Threaten to contact Zagreb and things really get moving. With RBA its different. The fish stinks fromthe head and the further up one gets the more rotten it becomes.
|
|
|
Post by darcy on Dec 24, 2007 12:41:39 GMT 1
The fish stinks from the head, but gets cleaned from the tail, says a Croatian joke. (Riba smrdi od glave ali se cisti od repa.)
|
|
|
Post by happy on Dec 24, 2007 13:05:54 GMT 1
When I have had problems with other banks I complain to the boss and usually things change. Threaten to contact Zagreb and things really get moving. With RBA its different. The fish stinks fromthe head and the further up one gets the more rotten it becomes. Don't always blame the foreign banks. It's more to do with Croatian banking regulations!
|
|
Nick
New Member
Posts: 8
|
Post by Nick on Dec 28, 2007 21:31:50 GMT 1
In most countries the responsibility for paying taxes and transferring money lies with the people themselves: if you do it wrong you could get a fine. In Croatia it is simply made impossible to do anything wrong. The system blocks such completely.
The problem is that you need to know what is blocking your transfer of money from Cro to Oz. Because, as Carol said, you should be able to do so. The problem could absolutely be something very simple or could be a complete misunderstanding of intentions, making the bank clerk stall your transfer. Or it could have to do with how the money got into the account at the time of purchasing the flat.
Best advise here is to have a good lawyer or tax adviser in your region fix it. Let me know if you need the right person for this.
|
|