Silly Bank

On Thursday, Maggie and I went back to BNP Paribas to start the process of opening a bank account for her. We walked in, went up to the same receptionist I had talked to the previous week, and Maggie said, "Je voudrais ouvrir un compte bancaire." So far, so good.

But then the receptionist asked to see Maggie's pièce d'identité, and when Maggie handed over her passport, the receptionist called over an associate. This woman - whom I hadn't seen when I came in to open my account - informed us that Maggie did not have the right to open a bank acccount because her visa allowed her to enter France, but not to live there. (She was rather indignant about the whole thing, which seemed unnecessary.) Maggie would need the carte de séjour before she could open a bank account. I tried arguing with the woman, telling her that the law had changed and we no longer needed cartes de séjour, that instead we had to mail in some documentation and that it would take a while to get the extra "titre de séjour" on our passports. No dice.

This was all very frustrating, and confusing. When I went to open my bank account, no one asked for une pièce d'identité until it was time to sign papers. And when I expressed surprise to Véronique, the associate who was opening my account, admitting that I thought I would need a carte de séjour, she dismissed the notion completely. But I couldn't tell the indignant associate any of these things, because I didn't want my account to be frozen, and I didn't want Véronique to get in trouble. So basically Maggie was unlucky, and will have to wait some unknown amount of time.

Then again, we did believe that we'd need cartes de séjour to open an account, so none of this really comes as a surprise. Luckily my account is almost open (I should be able to pick up my carte bancaire and carte bleue tomorrow or Tuesday), so we'll be able to pay utilities at the end of the month, which is clutch.