When you leave the country, it’s a really good idea to tell the bank so you have money when you get there. We have two accounts and to make sure we could use either, I called both banks.

Wells Fargo was first on the list.

I got through the phone tree pretty quickly and was able to get help. I had both a debit card and a credit card there that I wanted to authorize. The teller was able to take care of all it in one fell swoop.

Now for the USBank experience.

Again, got through the phone tree pretty quickly. They didn’t make me enter an account # to speak with someone which was great. I always like it when companies don’t make it hard for me because at the time I was multi-tasking and taking my new baked lamp chops out of the oven so I really didn’t have the digits to punch in the numbers.

The disappointing part was that the accounts are not tied together. So I gave all the info to the teller for my debit card and when I asked if she could also flag my credit card, she had to transfer me. I was transferred and no info came with me. I had to repeat all the same info for this second teller. Annoying for the customer and costly for the bank.

The other dirty little VISA secret is that you pay 3% for every transaction because there is a conversion that needs to happen. Really? Isn’t it all digital? It costs them 3% of the cost of my transaction to do the math? Sure does pay to be the bank.