Greetings. Wells Fargo will be closing my account soon as I am an expat and they are no longer interested in having me. I'm more than happy to open a dollar account at BPI and have my SS and pension checks directly deposited there. My major problem is paying my USA AMEX and Visa credit cards. Currently I have the monthly charges automatically withdrawn from my Wells Fargo account. That will no longer be possible. I desperately need a way to pay my USA Credit Cards without a USA bank account. Mail and Wire transfer are too slow and costly. If anyone is already doing this or has a solution please let me know. THank you.
Outside of a law suit against Wells Fargo for discrimination for a few million USD, You can purchase a money order and mail this with your statement to your credit card issuer. As it is mailed you may have to pay express fees to avoid late payment fees, but it is just one alternative out of many. I myself cut all my cards in half when I retired here. To retire is to afford to retire particularly when abroad or in our case, Philippines.
Is your address on file with Wells Fargo your Philippine address? If yes then concider using a USA address (child, sibling, some other relative). Works for me, been here since 2018 and the notice I get is to use their credit card more often to avoid deactivation and updates on minimum acct balance requirements.
I am sorry to hear of your problem but in a way i am glad to hear that it's just not me that this is happening to, i was beginning to think it was a conspiracy against me alone. My situation is different as my bank account and credit card account are with UK banks. A few months ago a tried using a different company to transfer money from UK to my account here, my bank refused the transfer with a reason that they suspected that the company was a crypto currency dealer (so what, i am changing UK pounds to PHP) they then without informing me blocked my internet access to my account, this took many phone calls to put right and at the end they gave me £100 compensation. My credit card company had been sending me emails, letters to my UK house and texts to my UK phone number stating that if i did not have a UK address they would close my account, many online chats and phone calls assured me that the notifications were a mistake and this would not happen, guess what ? it did happen. I called them and they were very apologetic, i told them that as i am at the moment spending an extended period of time in a country that would leave you to die outside the hospital if you had no visible means of payment that this situation has to be rectified ASAP, they said OK but it took 3 weeks before i could use my card again. They gave only £50 compensation. Don't even go to the UK state pension can of worms, they freeze pension payments meaning no yearly increase to keep up with inflation depending on which country you decide to live in.
Fortunately we get the yearly pension increases here in Philippines, though we are not eligible for the various cost of living payments that are being made at the moment.
I have a similar problem with Wells Fargo. I was only using them for a pass through of a second pension and not for banking. I guess the $35 or $40 they were charging for the transfer fee was costing them more.
Vox: are you stuck in ph already or still in the UK? Why not open a couple new a/c's before leaving, with a variety of banks? Or stop in HNL on the way and open one there? Also in my experience, lots of banks will use several adresses for one account, one reserved for snailmail like for "plastic", in any different country. And one for the country where "your" branch is located. I vaguely think that friend's of mine local addy has not been used in years. With US banks every once in a while your snail mail addy [my permanent forwarding mail service] will forward me an official Uncle Sam tax form used to declare I am NOT a resident, and that is the end of it. Has worked for me for endless years. Why not a cheap quickie travel to S'pore etc and open a quality account there.... New plastic as well. If you could stop in Canada and open an account with "Royal Bank" then they'll give you an account with their subsidiary in the US w/o having to set foot in the US.... Online transfers between both at no cost, instant. Modern banking is so very unreliable that for me it is "belt and braces". Best banking "era" in my opinion is with the "Travelers Checks". Have to pass tru HNL again soon, for a "last time" and thinking it is worth my while to open yet another one there. As out of nowhere I had lost online access to the one I have... at a time where I could not *phone* them... Cheers. Christian
