BDO, Banco de Oro, is the largest bank in the Philippines. It belongs to the SM Group owned by billionaire Henry Sy. In previous comments to a post regarding a dollar account my asawa and I were trying to open with Banco de Oro, I had threatened to close our account with the banking giant and go to BPI, Bank of the Philippines. But there’s a possibility that BDO has fixed our dollar account in the Philippines. Maybe. How? Let me tell you the story, O True Believer (as I borrow heavily from Stan Lee.)
Hanging out with Metrobank guards. I’ve never hung out with BDO security yet.
Let it be known that I am a man of very limited patience. I’m an American male. An expat that has lived in the Philippines for over five years with my much more patient wife. I used to refer to her as The Sainted Patient Wife. While my asawa does have a ton more patience than I do, she also has been going through menopause the last couple of years.
Throw her elderly Father, who lives with us, into the mix, and who is suffering from dementia and routinely sings to himself all hours of the morning and talks to dead people and you might understand why my wife’s stress levels have risen. The fact that we are building a new home in Guimaras, the island province we live in, doesn’t help either. The fact that she has been married to me almost 15 years is also a contributing factor.
Lolo, on the right, with the healer. That didn’t work out well.
My wife and I have to transfer large sums of money for our bank account in the United States in order to buy a new truck and to build the new digs. We have used the remittance service from XOOM over the past years since my debit card from our U.S. bank expired. XOOM has worked fine for transferring smaller amounts but while they charge only 4.99 per each $2,999.00 transaction, they sock you for almost a peso per dollar on the exchange. That’s not practical for moving large amounts of money.
So when the teller at BDO had set up a BDO Kabayan Savings Account for us, instead of a BDO Dollar Account, and told us we would not be able to deposit checks from our U.S. bank, we were going to close the account and go elsewhere.
But we had to make a trip to Iloilo the other day and I decided to pop into the bank and speak to a different teller than the one that set up our account. When I told the employee that we would be unable to deposit our U.S. checks she advised us that all my wife, who did not have two valid ID’s to open up a BDO Dollar Account, would only need a Barangay Certificate from our home in Guimaras along with an attached Community Tax Certificate, in order to deposit our checks. Our funds would still take 21 business days to clear, but we could use the Kabayan Account for the same purpose as a Dollar Account would serve.
I also expressed my concern to the teller over a problem one of my readers had with BDO. I explained to her that one of my expat friends had wanted to withdraw 1,000 dollars from their account but were told they would have to wait ten days. The employee expressed surprise at this and did say the bank does not carry that much U.S. currency in stock on a daily basis. We would need to call the day before to be sure the bank would have the cash on hand.
So after a brief ten minute stop to our local barangay where the new Barangay Captain signed my wife’s certificate, which only cost 60 pesos, $1.33, we were on our way. Did I mention that one of our local trike drivers took us to the hall at 7:30 am and then told us it did not open until 9:00?
“Why in the hell didn’t he tell us that in the first place?” I asked my wife, in my usual grumpy tone.
“I didn’t know what time it opened!” she exclaimed and had the driver take us to our former home at “The Compound” in the meantime to wait, where her sister, brother-in-law and nieces and nephew reside.
So we will return to Banco de Oro later this week and try to deposit our check from the States and wait for it to clear. From the vast research I have done online regarding the topic of transferring funds from the States to the Philippines, writing a check to yourself and depositing it in a dollar account in the Philippines is the most economical and best way to go.
Has BDO has fixed our dollar account in the Philippines. Maybe. We’ll have to see.
Yes, their answers vary from day to day depending on who you talk to. I would be truly amazed if the bank did not have at least $1,000 USD on hand at all times….
When we moved from San Jose, Antique to Roxas, Capiz we tried to update our bank mailing address and personal info. We were told that we would have to travel back to the BDO branch in Antique to do this. This was prior to the withdrawal incident, which took place a few days later 🙂
Just curious Dave, BDO’s online “banking” system used to never allow you to exchange money between a BDO USD and BDO Pesos account or to even check status / balance consistently online. Does’t that work these days? Or do you still have to go stand in line with bad customer service to do those tasks? Liza and I rarely have to go stand in line these days. Only when we deposit a USA written check for the most part. We even pay our rent and many other bills online.
Isn’t it sometimes just irritating how calm and forgiving Filipinas are when dealing with other people, lol. I think I am much more like you, and go ballistic at times also.
Do you know Dave, if they have safety deposit boxes in banks there.
From my reading I also came to the conclusion that writing a personnel check to cash is currently the way to go as far as fees are involved, but I read it takes about a month for the check to clear, so I must plan one month in advance at all times it sounds.
From all the bad comments others have made about BDO, I will go elsewhere I think, but sounds like they all have some crazy rules there.
Dave,
I called my credit union yesterday to ask them a few questions about wire transfers from here to Phil. They said there charge is a flat $30.00 fee, regardless of the amount transferred, and once I set the account up for living there, its only a matter of making a free phone call and answering the security questions. She said it typically takes up to 48 hours to actually complete it, and the funds should be avail. there in Phil., but no idea how long it might actually take before the Phil. bank will release the funds, and no idea if the bank there has a separate charge also. Thats the way Xoom works except for the peso they take for each dollar transferred. I also asked her about writing a personal check to cash in the Phil. and she said that all that is also now done electronically and could not believe when I told her that it takes a month there to actually get the money from the bank there, she said ,worse case checks are cleared in 7-10 days max and most were cleared in 3-4 days internationally. She also said that all transfers in excess of $10,000 are noted to the IRS, like when a deposit here is also if it $10,000 or more.
I am not totally sure if I understand yet how a dollar account works for sure after reading a couple responses. Say you write a check in your bank there for $100,000 doesent that mean that once everything is cleared and completed, the bank there will have the funds to pay you in US dollars. I saw Scott H said they had to call the day before so the bank would have it on hand. Thats why I was asking about safety deposit boxes, I figured it might be a good idea to just keep a fair amount of actual dollars in it and go and get it out of the box whenever I needed money, rather than going to the teller and them not having any dollars on hand at the time. Am assuming the vaults there are safe though, and the guards actually have bullets in there guns, and are not Barney Fife style.
Dave,
Hopefully you’ll be able to use your check with the Kabayan Account. You don’t need any delays for the house building. I still don’t know if i trust BDO, we will see i guess.
Dave, we had the luxury of having an account at Citibank both in the states and the Philppines before we started our build. Even though they are only loosely affiliated we could electronically transfer funds. No we have both a USD and Peso account at BPI. Like you we deposit our check, wait for clearance, call the day before with the amount of USD we wish to take out (for our monthly expenses) and go pick it up. What we did while building the house though was to ask the bank to have a money lender come to the branch when we exchanged LARGE amounts of USD into pesos. Our branch was nice about it and had there “favorite” changer. That way we didn’t take the hit using the banks low exchange rate.
Just a note….we have had our dollar account at BDO in Roxas City for 2 years now. We have wired transferred large amounts for home building and the funds were available approx 5 days later. In addition we deposit a personal check monthly for expenses with no fee. We always withdraw $1000 plus monthly and have never had to wait a few days for cash…they have plenty of money on hands. Just our experience.