Lebanese Banks: No boxes to rent


This is a scandal: in a country that bills itself as the banker of choice to the oil rich Gulfies and Lebanese expatriates the hardest thing to do is rent a safety deposit box at a Lebanese bank.

This news just in: No safety deposit boxes available in Lebanon! Well, I may exaggerate a little for effect and to get you to keep reading, but I’ve asked around, believe me. When you ask for a box to rent, the incredulous looks you get from bank staff as they size you up based on how you’re dressed and the expensive or not so expensive watch you happen to be wearing, makes my stomach turn. I hope the Lebanese Government taxes banks to within an inch of their over indulgent lives, it couldn’t happen to a more nauseatingly parochial industry.

I started with the Alpha banks, and, as anyone would, with the bank at which I have an account, “sorry, no availability”, was the reply. I next tried a bank at which a close friend works, “I wish I could help,” my friend said, “but we don’t have safety deposit boxes, but this is the next thing on our mind to do.” Really, you think!

I moved down the list of Alpha banks and went to my bank’s direct competitor where the answer to my query was rather a bit more artful. First, they gave me hope, “please have a seat sir, you will be attended to shortly”, a short wait followed then a summons from one of the desk clerks.

“Just to save you some time, do you have an account at our branch?” she asked.
 I replied: “No, I bank at your competitor’s.”
To which she retorted: “Well, to get a safety deposit box here you need to block a minimum of $100,000 on deposit in our bank, and we need to send a request to head office.”
I walk out muttering to myself like Muttley from Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races cartoon.
 

The last bank I try was a bank I had used in the past to remit my salary to. Once again the reply was “no availability.” Its not that they try to help in any way by directing me to a branch that does have boxes available to rent, they just don’t seem to care. It seems that banks are more concerned with pushing credit cards on the ever more cash strapped Lebanese consumer to build up a future debtor clientele than with helping a walk in customer with a very basic need that every bank should be able to meet.

I find it odd that banks no longer seem to care about building a relationship with a client but more concerned with hooking a client on cheap and easy money so he may continue to be burdened by debt all his life instead of encouraging saving behavior and fiscal responsibility. Have banks gone completely bonkers? Well, that’s sort of rhetorical, just take a look at the mess the global financial melt down left in its wake and the answer is quiet obvious!

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