Our Swiss Bank Account

There is a certain mystique about Swiss bank accounts. Switzerland is a politically neutral country that is known for having a stable economy and currency. It also is known for having high standards of security and privacy, which make it a desirable place for people to store their wealth. The world capital of banking is right here in Zurich, probably less than 40km from where I sit. When we arrived in Switzerland, it seemed like a good idea to open an account here, for convenient access to money if nothing else. Of course, it is also fun to say we have a Swiss bank account.
My second day in the county we had a meeting with a representative from UBS. UBS is the largest bank in Switzerland and also has international offices, including ones in the US. We chose UBS mostly because it was easy to get English-language information and we thought it might be easier to transfer money through a bank that has offices in the US. When we met with our lady she asked if we wanted to hang up our coats. We already had them draped across the backs of our chairs, so we declined. She seemed a bit disappointed, the Swiss are really into having coat racks and hanging their coats. We don't go much for proper coat-hanging. I hope she wasn't too offended by our lack of coat-hanging manners. We chose a suitable plan for us, filled out the paperwork and she told us several times that we would get our ATM cards in the mail AND a calculator. Ok, so we get a free calculator for banking. Isn't that a nice Swiss touch, but why does she keep telling us about it, as if it is something really special. We asked her about transferring money from a US bank. She assured us it was no problem, we just had to request a transfer from our bank. And off we went, excited about the prospects of accessing our money through our Swiss bank account. That was a month ago and we still don't have any money in our account. I will come back to that in a minute but first the calculator...
Over the course of the next week or more we receive several letters from UBS: One each acknowledging the opening of our account and our account number, one each for our ATM cards, one each for our initial ATM card PIN, one for our anxiously-awaited calculator, one for our calculator access card, one for our access card PIN, and maybe a few others that I am forgetting about. Shortly after it became clear that we were in possession of a secret-spy-code-breaking calculator that has multiple levels of security to restrict online access to your account. This is how it works. Insert access card into a sleeve on the back of the calculator. Enter your account number and the assigned PIN. Now change your PIN. Now when you log in to access your online account they give you a code. You have to turn on your calculator and enter your PIN. Now enter the code from the website into the calculator. The calculator gives you another code. Now type this one into the website and then you can see your account balance. Cool, huh? Hmmm... that's funny, there's no money in there...
It turns out that getting money into one of the most efficient countries in the world, with the mostly highly regarded banking system in the world, is not as easy as one might think. First, we found out that we could not get money deposited directly into the account because S is on a US funded grant and it must be deposited in a US bank account. Ok, fair enough. UBS indicated that we must initiate a money transfer through our existing bank. When we contacted S's current bank they said they could not transfer the money, but we could write a check if we wanted to. We wrote a check to our account with UBS. They indicated that it could take as long as 2 weeks to clear from the US. Seems a little long in this day and age of instant, electronic communication, but ok. That was over 3 weeks ago. Every day last week I was pulling out my spy calculator and checking our balance, hoping the money would arrive before we had to pay rent. It never did. The money was withdrawn from the original account 4 days after we deposited the check but it has still not made it to our account. Yesterday we went into the bank to see what was going on. The woman at the counter said it was not in our account and could not tell us where it was so we went back to our account-opening person. She made some calls and said we should see it by Friday, but could not answer our primary question, which is "If the money was debited from our account and you don't have it, then where is it?" I know our $6,000 in a currency that is becoming less and less valuable may be small potatoes for them but it is a lot of money for me. We left there baffled by the whole process.
We ran into the one of our language classmates after leaving the bank and he said "oh yeah, UBS is having some serious problems." What? The biggest bank in Switzerland, the world banking headquarters, having problems. Since I don't keep up with the financial news, I googled UBS and found that they have suffered the biggest losses of any bank in the whole sub-prime mortgage fiasco (over 11 billion Swiss Francs, which is roughly equal to about $11 billion) and they just announced today that they will be laying off up to 5,500 workers. Damn those sub-prime mortgages. First they devalue our money here (because S is paid in $US) and now they make it difficult for us to get the money we do have. I am assuming that maybe the delay has been because they have other more important stuff going on. So there you have it, the mystique of the Swiss bank account revealed.