ScotiaBank

Although I live in California, I own a house in Canada which I rent out.
Scotiabank handles the mortgage on this property and I have a chequing
account with them for this reason.

About 6 months ago I wanted to pull the equity out of my house up there
(its currently a rental), and purchase another rental property. This
was driven by the fact that I don't have enough interest and expenses
to offset the income and I really don't want to pay Canadian income tax.

So, I email my rep and get the ball rolling. She says its no problem
and she gives me the costs associated with the thing. $400 for an
appraisal, then they will let me take out up to 75% of the value as
a kind of line of credit which I could use to put a down payment on
the new property.

I tell her to go ahead with this. 3 days later she calls me back.
She says that they don't normally loan money to people with addresses
outside of Canada, but since I'm such a good customer, they will
let me pull out up to 50% of the value of the house, but if I purchase
another rental property, they will only give me a mortgage if I put
50% down on the property. Well, it didn't take me long to do the
math on this one - it just won't work. I told her that I didn't
think this policy made any sense, but I just decided it wasn't worth
making a fuss about.

Last week I noticed that I no longer seemed to get any interest
in my chequing account. I asked them about it and they mentioned
that the chequing account no longer earns interest, but that
I should open a money master savings account. Ok, so I go down
to the branch while I was in Canada for vacation and ask about it.
"You'll need to make an appointment for some time next week", the
receptionist says. "Um, I won't be here next week", I say.... "Can
I do this over the net?". She says, "Sure, over the net or by phone
will work".

So I call them on the phone and open the account. "I'd like to automatically
sweep anything over $2000 from the chequing account into the savings account
each month", I say. The guy on the phone says, "Sure, how much do you
want to transfer each month?" I say, "I don't know. Just whatever is greater
than $2000 in the account". He says, "Ok, I'll transfer $2000 per month
into the new account.". I said, "No, just whatever is greater than $2000...".
We finally get it worked out and he says, "Um, we can't do that. We can
only transfer a certain amount of money each month". I give up - I tell
him that I'll just do it manually. He says, Ok, it will take 72 hours to
setup the account (it will be visible via the Internet) and another 4 days
before I can actually transfer money into or out of the account.

I get a call today and he says that he is sorry, but they can't open
the account because I have a US address. The account has to be a
foreign account with tax withholding. "Ok", I say, "make it
one of those accounts". He says, "you'll have to go into the branch to
do that". I try to explain that I can't just pop-in to the branch at
lunch time because I'm 2500 miles away, but this seems lost to him.

I'm explained to him that he is really making it hard for me to continue
dealing with Scotiabank. They just can't seem to deal well with people
who don't have a Canadian address.