Landlady demands "clean" US bills for deposit

[DonPiter]

Hello,

This is am outrageous demand if i ever heard one:

I was paying a deposit for a temp. rent, the standar thing to reserve a place, you know the drill.

I was paying US120 in dollar bills, i bought the bills in Alto Palermo.

When i give them to the land lady she says she can't take them because some of them have small ink stains in the corners. In disbelief i ask why that is a problem and she claims the local bank will discount her 10% if the bills are stained.

She agreed that anyplace in the world where they take dollars, these bills would be 100% good to take, but in this case, not by her bank.

Is this normal? has anyone come across this? the fact that the market is handled in dollars is bad enough and Argentines can be unreasonable, but this is the kicker.

 

[katti]

Hello,

This is am outrageous demand if i ever heard one:

I was paying a deposit for a temp. rent, the standar thing to reserve a place, you know the drill.

I was paying US120 in dollar bills, i bought the bills in Alto Palermo.

When i give them to the land lady she says she can't take them because some of them have small ink stains in the corners. In disbelief i ask why that is a problem and she claims the local bank will discount her 10% if the bills are stained.

She agreed that anyplace in the world where they take dollars, these bills would be 100% good to take, but in this case, not by her bank.

Is this normal? has anyone come across this? the fact that the market is handled in dollars is bad enough and Argentines can be unreasonable, but this is the kicker.

I had this in an exchange office. They told me that the bank would not accept it either. I said that I had gotten it from a bank in Belgium, and he didn't believe me. He then told me "in the US they don't accept our dirty pesos either", which I thought was a very stupid remark...
I then took my 100 dollarbill back to Belgium and changed it for a clean one.

 

[SaraSara]

Both in Argentina and Uruguay no one will accept bills with writing on them, but that's the first I heard about ink stains.

When receiving dollars here, it's a good practice to examine them front and back for markings, and accept only clean ones.

Also, when getting money from an overseas bank ask the clerk for new bills - saves trouble.

 

[DwightB]

I've been asked to take back US bills with tears, stains, and writing. This is not the first foreign country I've had this problem in. Always best to scan your bills before travel abroad and exchange possible problem bills for clean one. Oh yeah, some places won't take brand new bills either.

Dwight

 

[AlexfromLA]

It's kind of hard to tell what the bills actually looked like from your description. If the bills were stained then the landlord might have a problem at a local bank. I have had dollars denied for this same reason at Jumbo Palermo on two occasions ( one time it was written on, the other time it was stained ), at Osaka on one occasion ( it had a slight tear in the corner ), from the Buenos Aires design guy who did my wooden floors( lol, it was old and stained, it really was ) , from Kansas ( they don't accept dollars ). Like it or not they have the right to refuse stained old or damaged bills. This also happened to me in Europe right after the new $ 100 usd bills came out, many exchange houses wouldn't accept my old bills.

It is obviously pretty upsetting when you're on the receiving end. I was so infuriated at the Jumbo when they refused one of my bills, I had about $ 500 usd worth of groceries and I just left all the groceries there and walked out ( lol what a douche right ? ) leaving the cashier dumbfounded. In hind sight I should have been more understanding and polite and just paid with a different bill.

When I got home that day I mentioned it to a friend of mine and she said " You are not in the USA, even though people use dollars alot here that doesn't mean they have to except old or stained bills, if you had old or stained pesos, they would have to accept them because this is Argentina but dollars aren't the national currency here ".

In the end she was right. If I went to an exchange house in the US with some old raggedy pesos chances are they wouldn't be accepted. More than anything I noticed it was just some good old American arrogance coming out of me like " what, i'm American these are AMERICAN dollars, who cares if they are stained you must accept them as legal tender ". Lol well that's not the case here.

From that day forward, I always use crisp brand new notes just in case and if I have older bills, I try to exchange those at banks or exchange houses first. It's alot less embarrassing to get denied at a bank than it is a restaurant, a super market or by your Argentinian landlady ( lulz ).

suck it up, and learn from this experience so it doesn't happen again.

 

[DonPiter]

Thanks for your replies.

In Colombia we say "El loco soy yo", so I guess im the crazy one then, maybe as a child of the electronic era all this paper stuff just seems completely ridiculous, it's bad enough people here don't accept a digital money transfers or credit card payments and demand paper bills in hand like it's the 1970's.

Not really a matter of pride, but sure, guess i'll go get some pretty pieces of paper for them. After 3 years Argentina still has a way to surprise me with technical details of this kind.

 

[perry]

Good thread Don and I can tell you that this problem is quite common and the argentinian property owner who accepts dollar will do so looking at them with a fine tooth comb.

The funniest situation that I was in recently was a property transaction at a well known bank where the seller was so suspicious and paranoid that he even brought his own bill detector from home to check each note individually . As you can imagine this took 45 minutes with three people helping him all were family of course.

What made this situation ironic was that the notes were issues brand new at the bank as it was an international wire transfer in dollars. The buyer an american citizen was shocked and humoured by the experience

 

[gouchobob]

I've heard of people having this problem here more than once. It seems ridiculous to me as some of the supposed problem notes had only very minor blemishes. My sister in law traveled here with crisp nearly new notes she had from a bank from another nearby country. The bank had put a very small stamp on the notes to help prevent people from getting counterfeit bills. These notes would be completely acceptable in anywhere in the world but here. She went to a counting house here and they would accept none of the notes, well after some discussion they would in fact take the notes for about 85% of face value. Just another fact (hassle/scam) of being in Argentina.

 

[estudiolondres]

It has happened to me in different parts of the world...not only in Argentina...Uruguay, Chile, USA, Canada and different countries in Europe. different shops wouldn't accept their own torn, stained or marked bills...

 

[arty]

I've had people refuse bills that were torn many times, never dealt with any stained ones. The banks I use in the USA (BofA) took all my pesos expect the 2 dollar one, they just didn't accept any that low.

As for walking out at the jumbo, I would of done the same thing. People in Argentina like to be a pain in the ass so it's ok to be one too once in a while.