The Italian banking system.......

.....SUCKS!!!

It really does, its years behind and completely useless( I can't even tell you how many times I used the words useless this week so far!) The problem has come from us needing to pay our preschool. Since we haven't set up an Italian bank account yet(and are trying to avoid doing so) we needed to find a way to get our money over here. After investigating many methods we've come to the conclusion that there is NO good way to get money over here from Canada!!!!
In order to email or wire transfer money to a branch here we would have to be present to physically sign for it at our home branch, until teleportation is invented this is impossible for us. Western Union can do it but the fees are INSANE. Visa told us that we should just go into a bank and open an account and do a cash advance from the Visa to put money in it. Sounds simple doesn't it, after all, Visa told us to do it. WELL, its not.
FOUR different banks in San Donato(fair sized banks, not holes in the wall) all claimed that they had never done a cash advance from a Visa, that they couldn't do it, a "bigger branch" would have to do it. The branch Richard went into was the branch that Saipam uses to do all their banking, how much bigger does it need to be!!?!?
So basically we had to take out cash in big sum and pay that way. It was really annoying let me tell you and made me paranoid!!!!!