Sunday night in Beijing — we were fresh off a great Hot Pot experience, and back in the lobby of the hotel with $0 in our pockets.  Luckily, there was an ATM in the lobby.  I made several unsuccessful attempts at withdrawing money from my “Credit” account, thinking I was just trying to take out more than the ATM max amount;  Nicole successfully withdrew 800 RMB from her “Cheque” account.

I corrected my mistake and got 2000 RMB (~$320 USD).  We hung out on the lobby’s better wifi for a while before heading up to our room for the night.  About 30 minutes later as I was packing for our 10:05am train ride to Xi’An the next morning, I realized I did not take my debit card out of the ATM!  While we were in the lobby, we did not notice a lot of traffic or any ATM users, so I rushed down hoping it was still hanging out the machine.  It was not.  The front desk informed me that the ATM will “eat” the card if it sits there too long (a good thing), but that the ATM service folks could not be contacted until 9am the next morning, and then that they probably wouldn’t be out to retrieve the card until around noon.

American ATMs beep loudly, talk to you, flash lights in your eyes, and spit out your card early, or with the cash and receipt.  This ATM spits out the card last, without much fanfare.  I was so happy to have gotten my 2000 RMB, I did not think about the future withdrawals I’d have to make with my card :-\

The next morning, assuming that the ATM ate the card and it was not stolen, we find out that the ATM service was going to stop by at 10am.  We bite the bullet, take a taxi to the Beijing West Railway Station (the second largest in Asia) because we can’t change our tickets through the web or phone.  Rebooked on the 14:42 train for -4 RMB (to our relief because we were warned by the hotel it might cost up to 500 RMB (half the price of our tickets).

It’s now 10:05am.  We hightail it back to the hotel in another taxi (Apple Maps said it should take 24 minutes with traffic, it actually took nearly 1.5 hours in heavy traffic and a driver that was more interested in chatting on the phone and hocking lugis out the window than providing speedy customer service — by the way, this is an absolutely disgusting habit (which I admittedly used to have when I was a kid) that the locals partake in everywhere.  On the sidewalk, in the train station (indoors!!), in front of you, next to you, behind you, almost on your foot.  Yuck).

At the hotel, the ATM had already been serviced.  They aren’t allowed to hand over any found cards to the hotel staff, so they informed me that I must walk 5 minutes to the nearest Bank of China branch to retrieve it with my passport.  Once there, I’m told that they don’t have it yet.  The people that service the ATM machines take between 3 and 7 days to turn any found cards over to the nearest branch.

Epic Fail.

After a walk back to the hotel, in the cold rain I might add, I gave in to Nicole’s insistence that I just cancel the card and move onward, relying on her (much the same way that we relied on Kelly and Jason for cash in Hakone and Jogasaki).

Now we’re officially living out of 1 pocket instead of the hybrid 1-2 pocket.

Depending on the spending restrictions Nicole imposes on me (j/k), I may have a new card shipped to meet us…but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Thanks to Nicole for making us document all our card numbers and telephone numbers, as you need them in order to cancel them.