Bank employee: "Can I help you, sir?" "I'm going to take the liberty of using the safe deposit box." "A safe deposit box? We're not going to let..." Bank saleswoman (who knows me reasonably well): "MR MCKENZIE! SO GREAT TO SEE YOU AGAIN! DOUBTLESS YOU ARE HERE FOR YOUR BOX."
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Replying to @patio11
Don't understand. Was the employee about to deny access to your box?
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Replying to @ctigeek
They were about to tell me, in no uncertain terms, that the bank would not rent me a safe deposit box. (It's relevant to this anecdote that I live in Tokyo and am not Japanese.)
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So there's an actual rule-rule about who is allowed to rent boxes and who is disallowed to rent boxes, but the not-rule rule is "a) A socially established b) customer of the bank who c) we want to enthusiastically court", and many front-line Japanese bank employees think I'm 0/3.
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The rule-rule is closer to "Must be a customer of this branch of the bank + must not be a member of a criminal group + must have a reason for using the safe deposit box which passes muster."
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The reason for the rule-rule is avoiding AML issues and operational risk for the bank (the bank really, really does not want you to put cash or gold in the safe deposit box and then e.g. give the key to someone else). For non-rule rule: boxes are scarce and high perceived value.
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
(This is mostly because of the premium on retail footprints in expensive neighborhoods of Tokyo and, secondarily, because the boxes are effectively loss leaders, so the bank has minimal incentive to have anywhere near the number of boxes it would take to cover customer base.)
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