FRUSTRATION!

WE ARE ALIVE! We've had a very frustrating and mind blowing 8 days. I will write a separate entry for the details of purchasing a car in Argentina . It truly deserves its own blog entry. I'm going to make this entry very short. What has happened in the last 8 days. Let's say that we have been in Buenos Aires for nearly 6 weeks now and that is 3 weeks too long. We like Buenos Aires, but like we've said before, we are not city people. Therefore, if it wasn't for the prolonged experience with the car purchase we would have left three weeks ago. Luckily, (one of the few things that has gone our way) our apartment hasn't been rented out and we have been able to extend it twice now.

Basicily, we spent the whole weekend following our trip to Colonia hoping that the money would have been wired into the Renault account and we would drive off with the car. Unfortunately, that's not what happened on Monday. We called our sales representative in the morning, Juan Harrington ( I will give Juan more praise in the car purchase entry) he informed us that the wire never went through. We went to the bank and after 30 minutes and two bank employees later, we were informed that Argentina has a law that prohibits tourists from transfering more than 5000 USD/month into any account. Banco France was very polite and we were given a lot of sad looks and "sorry." Every time I attempted to ask how to buy a car from the bank rep he said "sorry." At the end of our conversation he stated our money was sent back to the United States. Unfortunatley for us, it was a U.S. holiday (President's Day), so we couldn't verify this.

I'm a Bank of America fan/supporter and a little prejudice because I used to work for them, but they are pushing my patience at times. You would think an international bank would have a non 800 number to call when customers are overseas. When you're overseas you can't call an 800 number. Therefore, I've been calling BofA credit card services to transfer me to consumer checking BofA or the BofA Government liason dedicated non 800 number and having them transfer me. I think they are getting sick of me because they are starting to fuss a little bit when I call them. On Tuesday we called BofA (after numerous attempts and disconnects)and we were told they have no idea when the money will be returned to our account. Therefore, a quick throwing of the phone against the wall, explosive words, and after a liter of beer I was able to relax (comment from Jen: Lauren didn't really do all of these things he listed in anger, he just wanted to get his point across that he was extremely frustrated. He probably wanted to do those things though).

At that point we considered taking a cash advance off of our visa card. We made some phone calls and found out the fees and decided to do it. We went back to the Banco France and we were told that it is not possible to take a cash advance off of a credit card in Argentina. We didn't stop there, there must be a way! I did some research and found out that there are exchange houses or "casa de cambio" where money is exchanged and wire transfers are accepted. We went to an exchange house and we were told the same thing. Cash advance on a credit card is not possible in Argentina and money wires for anything greater than 5000 USD are not allowable.

The rest of the story will be told Sunday when I have more time, but I will leave you with this...

Here were our options at this point:

1) Have a family/friend fly to Buenos Aires with the money from our account
2) Quit our vacation and go home
3) Rent a car (3000USD/month) and continue our vacation and cut it short since expense will be high
4) Fly back to the U.S. and get the money myself

Your guess is as good as mine? What would you do?