Banking

It seems that banks, pretty much everywhere, are primitive institutions with strict rules to be followed whether they make a lot of sense or not. In Bangalore this seems to be true- perhaps more than at home.
We we arrived almost 2 years ago Jim's company recommended 3 or 4 banks with which to do business. We assumed they had made some arrangements for better service because of the large number of employees potentially being customers. We picked one well known international bank after we found one of the Indian banks to be an unpleasant place to visit.
We opened a checking account only and got an ATM card. The account is mainly for handling local expense re-embursements from the company. Jim's salary is paid into his US account as always. There is some Indian government regulation which prevents us from taking money out of the country once it is in the country, so paying bills would be impossible. (This seems bizarre, but things work fine as is.)
When the checking account was opened it had both our names on the account, but only Jim's actually appeared on the checks- which annoys Janet and seems a little odd too. They have since changed their practice and have put both names on the checks.
When the account was opened we had to write our names about 6 or 7 times so they could get a variety. then they had us sign another form stating that our signatures vary from time to time. We think this is so they could claim it was our fault if they allowed a check to clear that was forged. We have not written many checks, so for more than 18 months the few written were signed with Jim's full name- which appears on the check. Suddenly about 2 months or so ago, the bank stopped honoring the checks. Jim called them to ask why and they said it was because they were not signed with the correct name! When Jim pointed out that he had signed the same way for more than 18 months, they said it did not matter and he should go change the records at the bank if he wanted to sign with his full name. This was finally straightened out.
Jim recently went to the bank to close the account of a colleague who left India a long time ago. He had several forms that were all signed and dated. However, the person at the bank said that one of them was not signed, but it did not matter since there was no money in the account. In this case they only needed a letter signed by both the names on the account and it could be closed.
Jim received the letter in only a week's time and took it to the bank. This time a different person said that the account had a negative balance so he could not close it until that was paid. He said this was because the min. balance had not been maintained in the account. Jim got the person to speak to a manager and they agreed to waive the balance due and "try" to close the account. he said that they do not do this at their office- it had to go to another office and they would probably close it.
This kind of experience is apparently pretty common. We have not seen it much, but it consists of someone telling you one thing, but not telling you about the other 3 things you need to actually accomplish your goal. It is a big waste of time. It is apparently pretty common in dealing with government agencies. Their may be 3, 5, or 10 forms you need to fill out and get various signatures, but they will only tell you about form 2 after form 1 has already been submitted. Similarly, for forms 3, 4, 5 etc.
In general, the banks seem like they were in the US 30 or 40 years ago- except for the ATM's- there are lots of them around the bigger cities.