Opps! I Missed One…

Ha! I actually forgot to blog yesterday (Monday). I was so engrossed about my current predicament of not having played a single video game for the last 3 weeks (I’m dying…) that when my mates came over last night to have a round of gaming, I got so caught with playing that I forgot that the rest of the world actually matters.

Anyway, Monday’s past and here’s my ramble for today.

I just received my Citibank card which probably means my application was accepted and I now get to do business with one of the biggest banks in the world. The reason why I got a Citi account was because I learnt that they could bank and accept USD cheques a lot faster than local banks.

When I started out, I was using DBS to clear all my USD cheques and it’s a pain….!

Why?

Because the whole process is just silly to start off with. First, Clickbank sends me a cheque all the way to Singapore from the US. I receive, drop it with DBS and then they send all the way back to the US to clear the cheque. Think of all the additional fuel I’m wasting because they had to ship one extra piece of paper - back and forth!

After the cheque’s cleared, the US bank then remits the money back to DBS who then places it into my account. In all the process takes around 3-4 weeks to complete. And that’s not even counting the amount of time Clickbank takes to send me my cheques.

Oh yes, and DBS charges me around S$22 a pop to have a US cheque cleared. Which is actually reasonable after I did some checking.

So you know, I could actually be suffering a real cashflow problem like this (I don’t), I actually have to wait more than a month for my internet profits to be sitting pretty in my bank account. That’s sucky…

Anyway, I learnt from my friend Andrew Wee (link to show my gratitude. hah!) that he clears USD cheques in 2-3 days using Citi and it only costs him $5 a pop to do it. When I heard that, I was going - “damn! I’m being scalped by DBS!”

So I went ahead to open a Citi account with help dear Andrew and I now look forward to have my cheques cleared in double-quick time, so I can blow it on a good japanese meal immediately!

Ok before you go all excited, I just want to have a disclaimer put in here. Please don’t go around yelling around that Citi is doing what I mentioned above. There are terms and conditions involved and so please check with a bank representative for full details. I’m not one.

Anyway, thank you Andrew and I appreciate the help.

Out.