[Hibiscus]

Hi,

I've been living in the US for the last 10+ years and most of my finances are based here. I am about to move to NZ and want to tidy up as much as possible, but, need to keep my Bank of America account for a couple of years to pay taxes, receive bonuses and wean myself off my Amazon habit.

I'm getting very confused about whether I can use an NZ address for the account when I move. I went to my local bank a couple of months ago and asked if I could keep the account with an address outside of the US and was told yes, but am not totally confident because she muttered something about being a US citizen and I kept telling her I wasn't and I'm not sure it registered. If necessary I'm sure I could ask a friend/colleague to use their address but would prefer not to if at all possible.

Next question - has anyone transferred larger sums of money out of the US whilst in NZ? If so, what did you need to set up to do it? The bank currently insists that I physically go to the branch for every transfer - is this normal?

Any help will be much appreciated. I don't want to give them ideas on how to say no to me by asking too many questions.

Thanks!

[constablechuck]

The US Patriot Act places a responsibility on banks to know / spy on their customers, the US government likes to have absolute control and people that bank in the US but live overseas makes them uneasy, this means that having a foreign address will be discouraged and if they allow it expect to have simple banking practices become very complicated.

My advice is for you to hire a private mail receiving service in the US, then you can still have a US address and pay to get your mail forwarded to you in NZ once every few months, this has worked out well for me, you can also get a free US telephone number with voicemail at privatephone.com, you can login from any internet connection to listen to your messages.

[LindsayBean]

I've never had any problem keeping my US bank account registered to my foreign address (and i've had 5 different addresses in the last 5 years over 3 countries). My other foreign accounts (a UK/Irish one) have both been changed to foriegn addresses too no problems. Just had to show proof of identity. There should be no problem with it, although i bank with USAA which is geared towards US military personnel and their families so perhaps they see nothing strange with all my moving around. Worse comes to worse just make sure you have proof of address and send it in each time with a certified copy of your passport.

In terms of transferring money can do you it via online banking? I would presume BOA has that as most banks do. I've always used that to do online transfers. Surely they can't expect you to be at the bank for each transfer.

[Hibiscus]

Thanks for the advice constablechuck, I will set up a private mail receiving service as suggested. I've been chasing up the house number of the house I'm having built (currently just have the section #) to get the full postal address and have only just remembered that mail is not delivered directly. Everyone has a box at the local post office and the mailing address is a PO box # ......

I am not going to miss the financial bureacracy here one little bit. I nearly got caught out a couple of years ago when transferring the money to buy the land in NZ, I hadn't realised that the only account I could do international transfers from was my current account and that the money had to have been in there for over a certain length of time before it could be transferred out. I had the money earning higher interest in an internet bank account and had to move it pretty sharpish then sit and grind my teeth until I could move it on.

[hammadkkhan]

I have a Bank of America Credit card for the last 6 years and have been living outside the US for the last 4 years. I have opted to receive online banking statements and have my foreign address registered with the Bank. So they do accept foreign addresses and also they do send any important correspondence i.e. Policy Changes, renewed cards etc by postal mail.
The rest of the bills and stuff is available to view online and is pretty handy in transferring funds, communicating with the banking officers etc.
And before i finish, i am not a US citizen.

Hope this helps.

[sfordjasiri]

This company might be useful:

http://www.earthclassmail.com/

As far as transfering money from the US to NZ, I use XE Trade and do it all online. Very inexpensive.

[Hibiscus]

This is great stuff - thank you.

Have looked at XE Trade and is exactly what I want to do so am signing up. Much better than hifx for my requirements. I've also found a local mail service that I'm getting some more details on.

Out of interest, I did go to the bank earlier today and ask again about the hypothetical case of someone having an address outside the US. This time a phone call was made to check the rules and the answer came back as an unequivocal - you change to a foreign address, we close your account. I'm not messing with this one.

[Bozeman]

The only issue I have had with a foreign address with a US bank account (14+ years in four different countries) is that some things that are normally simple - like processing an address change - become a bit more complicated (must fax a signed document rather than simply doing it over the web). Other than that, there has not been an issue with any of my three banks.

[gpbenton]

The one problem I have had changing my address with Bank of America is that they would not let me use a P.O. Box - they had to have a physical address.

[akp713]

Here is a very important warning. I lived in New Zealand for six months with my primary banking account being my Bank of America Checking Account in Maryland. Two months after I arrived my identity was stolen online and I had US$1400 stolen from my account. The bank immediately replaced the money but they had to cancel my card. They were unable to send me a new one. After two months of attempts, during which they actually sent me the pin number for a new card which I never received, they finally told me that they were unable to send new cards to NZ because their mailing system wasn't set up to take NZ mailing addresses.

A second problem was they put me on hold for 30-40 minutes at a time on an international call! I had to have my parents in the US transfer my money to a local bank which I already had a debit card for and I used that for the rest of the time in NZ.

The final insult in this story is that when I returned to the US and asked them to send me a new card, they discovered they had never actually disabled the stolen card, and then they mailed my new card to the wrong address in the US so I still never got it. I closed that account and I will never deal with that bank again. But be warned that with BOA if it can go wrong, it will.