Novobanco, Jesus

I’m in portugal for over 3 years now and banking is one of these things that keep hunting you from time to time.

First to open one, as I’m not from European Union originally, I had to go to lawyers because the papers they request don’t exist where I come from and there is no way they could verify their legibility.

So it took me 7 months to open an account and 300+ EUR in fees, then my account was in “restricted” mode since I was still waiting on my residency card but they didn’t fully lift it even after I got my residency, so most of the features like credit were unavailable and sometimes I tried simple things like transfers which were locked in the app.

Beyond that every transfer I made or anyone else (including my employer) took at least 1 working day and with many holidays and weekends a lot of times took up to 5 days.

Now after 3 years with the account they requested the yearly “documents check“ which including work occupation and utility bills along with passport and residency.

Now the bank manager (Jesus) has requested these over email to be sent to their generic branch email (privacy doesn’t concern anyone there).

He’s the most arrogant bank manager I’ve ever seen by far, he talks half sentences, for example I sent those documents over and he replied with this:

“Send a standalone email indicating:

My data is up to date.”

It was already a standalone email that I sent?! Anyways I sent another one, got this reply:

“Hello,

I hope so.

Are you in Portugal?

Regards,“

And then he ignored what we have previously and sent me to an office branch to sign something to “update the data”

In the branch no one knows what that is, after waiting for over 30 minutes.

So with Jesus every interaction has been like that over 3 years, another one was out of the blue “please send money to your account as soon as possible“ without any other context.

All these banks do is re-verifying your documents every year and limiting your access to certain features all the time.

The only way you can do anything with them is by contacting that person over phone or email (until 3pm) or going to the branch that works until 3pm too workdays.

And I only use that account to pay for health insurance, electricity and taxes.