---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Reply to Ian Green about Paritate From: "Glencannon Group Ltd." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 19:54:53 -0700 (PDT) X-Message-Number: 38 Indeed everything you say is true. It really quite odd that the other banks in Latvia allowed this to happen? Don't they understand that the fall of Paritate, in such crude and unsophisticated manner, will only reflect ill on those more functional banks? I think everyone in that area needs to learn a few things about managing marketing issues and particularly crisis situations. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< I am sure there are some banks who do. I doubt that Latvia's largest bank cares much, as they have a substantial and growing customer base of their own. Of the other banks, Saules was recently bought out by Rietumu, meaning that those two banks probably could not particiapte in a buy out at this time. But from what I have experienced, Paritate was not run very well. we tried to open an account there for about 4-5 months a couple of years ago and had nothing but problems, lucky for us! We got nothing but the run around and lost a little bit of money. But at least we didn't loose as much as if we would have had an active account. There is a bank here in Costa Rica that bills itself as an "offshore expert" bank, but when you get below the surface, it is a slock operation just like Paritate. IN fact, I have joked sometimes that this bank in Costa Rica and Paritate must have a management exchange program because they are both terrible to deal with. But this particular bank in Costa Rica also has a negative net worth, if what I saw them doing last year is any indication. I already talked about this a year ago, so I will not bore all of you with the details, but they have a rapidly expanding customer base, but WHERE is the money going, because they would on a rotating basis subtract money from people's accounts and then put it back in before the statement cutoff and there was no indication on the statement to show where thousands of dollars [out of several accounts, mind you] had gone for a couple of weeks. Yet, as the managers of the fund, we knew that customer complaints about non working debit cards was not an isolated incident, but "business as usual" for these folks. Also, when we went to withdrawa the final monies from the fund on the way out the door, they stalled on issuing the check for several hours, with the first thing they said being that they "could not find the money in the account," and after about an hour and a tirade from me, they all of a sudden "discovered" it, it was all just an oversight, you see........ Bottom line, when someone wanted cold, hard cash from this bank it took the bank a while to find it...... This is fractional reserve banking at its worst! My suspicion is that someone at the top is either massively incompetent beyond belief [more likely than in most countries] or a crook or both. Needless to say, we are very happy to have gotten away from them unscathed last year and to have established new relationships with competent banks with good customer service. Bad customer service is a sign of worse trouble than the customer can imagine. This is also what worries us about egold so much, but that is a topic for another day. John http://www.offshorearnings.com http://destiny-worldwide.net Thank you all the same for the information. --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]