I bank with two banks in Kuwait personally. I use another 3 or 4 for work. I bitch about them all. People will often tell me, “hey why don’t switch to this bank or that bank?”, not knowing that I probably already use that bank. And that bank sucks. The best thing about banks in Kuwait is that they all smell nice, universally across the board. We have the best smelling banks in the world. But being asked to choose the best bank is like being asked to select a favourite fart. Eye-watering and offensive.
Sometimes people will tell me, and even I’ll find myself thinking, “man banks in London or the US or in Canada blah blah blah…” No no no. Those banks are garbage. Banks everywhere in the world are garbage. American and Canadian banks barely understand there are other countries. And once you explain that there is a place called ‘the rest of the world’ then you have to start explaining to them why their useless 1-800 number is useless.
As far as banks go, the best you can hope for is bukhur at the door and that they don’t block your card when you travel. After that, it doesn’t really matter. Be happy they’re not American banks. Or Greek banks (too soon?).
I use both NBK and Burgan Bank, and I have issues with both. The reason I have two in the first place is so that one covers the other when I travel. I’ve had so many strange issues when traveling I now need to have three different sources of debit and credit cards, the third one being American Express. How badly do my banks suck?
With NBK I’m a Thahabi customer which means I should get “better” service. A few weeks back I get called into my branch and into my personal banking officers room. He starts basically interrogating me, supposedly I transferred a large sum of money abroad to a company called Pershing LLC and it raised a flag with them. He passed me a form to fill which included a ton of personal questions, I told him I wasn’t going to fill it because they already have all my information. My banker told me this was not related to the money transfer and they’re just updating all their customers data. I told him thats bullshit and this was directly related to the money transfer. So he told me to go tell the manager I wasn’t going to fill it, so I did. I went to the manager and told him you guys are interrogating me over a transfer I made and now you want me to fill out this form with all this personal information which you should have already since I’ve been banking with you guys for 15 years. So the manager starts flipping through my files and asks me if I transferred an X amount of money a couple of months back. I right away recognized what that transfer was. I looked at him dumbfounded. Yes I did, I used my NBK brokerage account to transfer more money into it. I told him I don’t know who Pershing LLC is but my guess its a company you guys deal with (I later found out with a quick google it’s their clearing firm). I told him the transfer you’ve been interrogating me about was a transfer to you guys, NBK. I transferred my money to YOU. The manager was like give me five me minutes just to make a few calls and confirm. I told him I’ve already been here for 30 minutes and I’m not going to sit here any longer and they need to get their shit together because this was embarrassing and I walked out.
Burgan Bank on the other hand I had the weirdest issue last month. I launched the Burgan Bank app on my phone and forgot what my password was. Why? Because when they force you to change your password it has to be different than the last 6 passwords I’ve used with them. WTF. That actually makes it less secure not more secure because if I started using my level A password, the second time I’m going to use my level B, then C etc.. until I turn into a complete idiot and start using my name as my password. So I have to keep creating new difficult level A passwords which I’ve never used anywhere else in my life just for Burgan Bank. It’s hard enough to remember the all the passwords I already have so its natural I’m going to forget the special one I had to create just for Burgan Bank. So I clicked on the forget password link and it asked me my secret question and I put in my answer. It was wrong, so I put in another answer. Suddenly the app tells me I’ve put my answer wrong too many times and my account is now blocked and I need to go to their website, printout a form and then take it to a local branch. WHAT. THE. FUCK. I answered my secret question wrong twice (not three times)(and it’s my secret question not even password) and I could no longer access my account from the app, nor can I access it from the website (even though I know my password there) or anywhere else. And then to make it worse, I had to print out a form, fill it up and take it to their branch. I tried to unlock it over the phone by calling the call center which is what I can do with NBK but I was told I needed to print that form and take it to the branch physically. I was surprised they didn’t want me to fax anything or mail them a postcard.
So yeah, these are just two of the most recent problems, I’ve had A LOT more. I hate banks so there will be no winner nor even a runner up for this award.
