We now have an Ecuadorian saving account, which gives us a Debit Card and online ability to pay Ecuadorian vendors, as well as the ability for free ATM cash access. There are a few bloggers that have detailed how to go about this in the past, so we had a pretty good idea of what to expect. The best of these was on Gringos Abroad, which gives a detailed list of information needed. Read his post to see what documents to bring.
Turns out the process was a bit easier than we expected, based on others telling us their stories, and reading other blogs.
The only real change, which took us about half an hour to resolve, is that Omar is no longer in the picture. He now only works with accounts larger than $50,000. When we finally reached him, Omar told us to go back to the first floor to open our account.
We went back to the initial lobby desk and said again that we wanted to open an account. The agent said (in Spanish) that we needed to go upstairs…? I said “No, Omar dijo primo pisa” (Omar told us first floor). She looked at me oddly and said “Si, esta es planta baja. Piso primo esta ariba” (yes, this is the the ground floor. First floor is above). Wow! I was in the wrong place, but i could actually understand her directions! That is success in my book! ☺
The rest is rather boring. We found an agent that would take our papers, He typed a whole lot of forms, printed out a large stack of papers, and told us to come back the following Monday to get our cards (the whole transaction being in Spanish). The following week (today), we picked up the debit card and e-key card for online access. We are now offically bank customers.
We used our facilitator to help us open ours, our Spanish is too limited. Same bank as you. Hubby picked up his debit card yesterday and we tried to use it. Yikes, no more English on the screen. We gve up, not sure if we changed the password or not. Will get our friend to go to the ATM with us. Next comes the joy of using the E-key to set up online access. LoL
I always have my iPhone with me, and use a couple of good translation apps on it. When we hit the ATM all-Spanish screen, my wife and I were confused too. Spa-Eng to the rescue! I put in 'retiro' (one of the buttons on the screen) and found it was the way to 'retire money from the account', aka 'withdraw.' From there we could figure out the rest.
Also, in the line to get the Debit Card, the woman on the far right (I never got her name, but she was in that seat all 4 times we entered the bank), speaks decent English. When I got the e-key, I said I did not understand how to use it, and they had me talk to her. She took me to the ATM to activate the Debit Card, then to the other machine to activate the e-key. She then explained how to use it.
I am expecting my first bill (from my cédula lawyer) tomorrow, and plan on using the e-key for the first time to then pay him. Wish me luck! 🙂