Ah, sunshine! Awoke to a glorious sunny day like I remembered, and that helped my mood a whole lot. Actually took the time to do a bit of TACFit, I nice little portable exercise program, and then did another check of the HomeChile site. Turns out, if you don’t specify “Providencia” in g00gle maps, you get pointed to the middle of nowhere but the actual offices are actually right next to the Los Leones metro station—i.e. where I went the day before.
Found my way out of the little mall that surrounds the subway station, and headed to the Banco de Chile, to see if I could find some place to store the cash I’d slowly been amassing for rent. The guard sent me across the street, to banco Edwards, for all things opening account related.
At banco Edwards, a spacious, quiet, cold and serious metal, glass and stone affair, I was eventually greeted by a friendly front desk clerk. She let me know that they required CH700,000 (about $1400) just to open an account. Woah… even if I wanted to (uncertain, ’cause honestly that seemed weird), it’d take me days to withdraw that much from ATMs, because of security caps on my account. She let me know that other banks in the Banco de Chile family would be less, like around CH500,000 to open an account. Hm, awesome.
I tried the Scotiabank. It was still austere, but warmer and in some way more human, and actually got to sit down with somebody. She was more informative: to get a cuenta corriente in Chile (a standard checking account), you need not only a RUT but two years worth of steady income in the governmental records. All this was because of the awesome power you get with a checkbook, wow. What if I don’t care about checks? Ah, well the plebe can always get una cuenta RUT, which is a checking account without the checks (meaning just a simple debit card and place to stow cash).
“Perfect, sign me up.” “You can get there from here”… Scotiabank doesn’t sell that product, she said. I’d have to try Banco Estado, where they seem to handle the little people like me. She gave me directions, and handshake and sent me on my way.
At Banco Estado, they’ve got the cuenta RUT. But no service. Neither spacious, nor austere, the place was like a bus terminal. I asked about who to talk to, and was directed towards a red phone on the wall. Oh boy, a phone… that would be easy. When I picked up I heard it autodial, though barely, through a ton of static. The automated system at the other end told me to enter my RUT, then moments after I did, said it would be unable to handle my request and call back later. A little relieved, I hung up and gave up.
The HomeChile offices were lost in the corner of a large building and sparsely decorated. There was less english expertise, but I got by en espanol. Mostly. The short story is that they didn’t have much available and that the subset that would accept renting for a single month was much smaller and they’d usually charge a bit extra. There was one I was interested in: the pictures were promising, the location was good. But in addition to the rent, there were extra gastos (building expenses, plus lights and maybe water, too) and they wanted an additional month’s rent as a deposit–all at once, all in cash if I didn’t have a bank account.
They understood that there were limits to how much I could withdraw from the ATM in short periods and offered to keep a smaller deposit and my passport as a guarantee. Not interested in that. I couldn’t visit the apartment immediately, as the owner lived out of the city. They contacted him, and he could come down on Sunday… when they’d be closed. I was on full paranoid mode, so I found all this fishy, but said I’d confirm I was still interested on Friday and I’d see the place before renting. Stayed in a hotel room, once, in San Diego that smelled like pee… wasn’t interested in that either, so I wanted to see how it was and that it was real, before moving forward.
On the way back through the minimall, I stopped off at the express Lider for a little breakfast goodies and hoping to contribute a bit to the food en la casa. Found a few things, even the sought-after nutella, but hardly any selection in terms of peanut butter and such. Somehow, I always feel most alien in supermarkets.
I proudly returned with honey, cheese, cold cuts and such. I’d later find out that I was the only one who would touch everything but the ham… ah well.
By the afternoon, the party was already starting with neighbours and grandchildren and puppies and … I was dead tired, and had a turbulent stomach, so ended up going to bed really early.
