27 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

There is a big difference between here and the states in the mater of reporting a person's death. That is why there is no restriction plus you get into differents states and their banking laws and etc.

It is certainly required here to protect the bank but it might of been a SSA requirement when the approval was done.

For the IDD deposits a member was researching other countries and a Philippine bank had the same requirement that it requires a person to do the withdrawal or transfer in person.

 

Yeap...same restriction at Philippines banks receiving US govt payments...see below Oct 18 post.

 

10 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

I don't consider making a monthly trip to the bank restrictive. Fill out a withdrawal slip and deposit slip for another account and transfer the money to it. 

Been doing it for almost 7 years now. I keep a stack of the slips at the house, complete them and go to the bank. Many times I am in and out of the bank in less than 5 minutes unless the small branch I go to is busy which is a rarity.

My only problem is that I live out in the rural sticks.  It's a 75km drive to my branch of BKK bank.  It's not earthshaking as long as I'm healthy and can drive. I make routine drives to Chiang Mai anyway.  But as I age, if driving becomes an issue, I'd be better off rerouting that payment back to the US and then transferring it over electronically as I've done in prior years, although doing so via ACH (which is going away) made it easy.  I wasn't aware of the 'in person withdrawal' rule before I made the change last year. 

18 minutes ago, connda said:

I wasn't aware of the 'in person withdrawal' rule before I made the change last year. 

I knew about the in person requirement before setting up the account. It was part of my planning for when I started getting social security payments. I saw it as the easiest and least costly way to do it.

Being 75 km from a Bangkok Bank branch is really out in the middle of nowhere. We have house in a village that is about 30 km to the Amphoe where there is a Bangkok Bank branch. Not staying there full time now since moving into the city to get our kids into better schools.

Re prior post saying "robots" may reject incoming international transfers if you don't pre-notify the bank:

 

I receive international transfers anywhere from once to 4 or 5 times a year, have done so for the past 22 years, differing amounts each time, never pre-notified the bank and never had a problem

 

In the very beginning i.e. 20 years back I twice received phone calls from the bank asking me the purpose of the funds (amounts were over 25k USD), I said living expenses and that was that. I suspect there was a cap amount above which some info was needed and that this amount has since been increased to a higher threshold.

 

I use Kasikorn.

 

But have not heard of anyone using any bank here having intl transfers rejected.

 

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