Me and BofA (Part 1): What, my new account doesn't exist?

I love the bureaucracy of the US and the challenges it gives you. There is always something exciting waiting for you around the corner, even for someone like me who thought he knows how it works after moving to California for the third time in nine years. This is my little story how the BofA and the US Patriot Act got into my life.

I moved here for my postdoc in April 2006 and almost immediately I opened a checking account so I can pay my everyday bills. To make my life as easy as possible I went to Bank of America where I have had an account in 1996-97, and in 2000-2003. I brought my old ATM card and transcripts so my account could be reactivated. Interestingly, there were 15 other people named "Henrik Bengtsson" in the Bay Area holding a BofA account, but sure enough, my previous records were of course not in their system. I had to open up an account from scratch - fine with me.

After a few weeks I was about to transfer my fundings from Sweden, but first I decided to transfer some money from my US PayPal account. After days of waiting, that failed:

"An electronic funds transfer from your PayPal account to your bank account was declined by the bank".

Odd. I checked the details multiple times, but I could see nothing wrong. Then Amanda, my flatmate, tried to transfer money from her BofA(!) account to me using online banking. Guess what:

"We were unable to find a match for the information you provided.
Please resubmit the request or contact the account owner to verify the information."

Uhum, we were sitting next to each other logged in at the same time and we got all of my details straight out of my online banking webpage. Same information on my transcripts. Then we tried all different combinations of my first and last names, my zip code, and so on. Nothing.

Anyway, this was probably the reason why it didn't work with PayPal either, so at least I managed to track down parts of the problem. At this stage I decided not to even bother to try wiring my postdoc funding from Sweden - that would just end up in more mess and probably extra bank fees.

Although I was trying to be optimisitic, I started to get that ugly feeling inside telling me this is going to be a long journey.

To be continued...