GMail Sucks

I never thought the day would come when I would say this, but -- I hate GMail! It seems that the GMail guys recently made lots of adjustments on their system to prevent spammers from taking advantage of their resources. But in the process, it has affected a lot of users including myself.

For the past 3 days, almost all my outgoing mail is being tagged as spam and is bounced back to me. I can receive incoming email without problems, but I can hardly reply to any of them. And the worst part is, after so many failed attempts in a day, my account got locked up for 24 hours!

So now I installed Mozilla Thunderbird and just configured it for IMAP with my GMail account. Then for my SMTP server, I just pointed it to Mozcom's SMTP so I can send out email. Its taking forever to synchronize the mailboxes though since I've been using GMail for years.

More Philippine Bank Codes

I tried to do an online fund transfer today from my Unionbank account to a client's HSBC account. When I checked the dropdown list, there was no HSBC but there was a "Hongkong Bank". Since I was not sure if it was one and the same, I called up Unionbank's Customer Service hotline. The phone rep put me on hold for a couple of minutes while she verified the info. She came back and told me that they are not the same.

I looked at the HTML code of the Unionbank Retail Internet Banking fund transfer page and it shows the different bank codes assigned to each item. I noticed that Hongkong Bank has a code of 010060014. I blogged a couple of years back about the possible bank codes that can be used when withdrawing money from PayPal to a bank account. I noted in that blog entry that based on Citibank's fund transfer page, code 010060014 belongs to HSBC.

Still not convinced, I decided to call a friend who works at HSBC and he confirmed that, a long time ago, HSBC was known simply as Hongkong Bank in the Philippines. So it seems that the Unionbank lady is mistaken.

Here's the bank code listing I got from Unionbank's page:

010770074 --- ABN AMRO
010320013 --- Allied Bank
010700015 --- ANZ Bank
011020011 --- Asia United Bank
010530667 --- Banco de Oro
010760013 --- Banco Santander Phil.Inc
010030015 --- Bangko Sentral
010670019 --- Bangkok Bank
010120019 --- Bank of America
011140014 --- Bank Of China (Manila)
010440016 --- Bank of Commerce
010040018 --- Bank of the Philippine Islands
010460012 --- Bank of Tokyo
010720011 --- Chase Manhattan Bank
010100013 --- China Bank
010690015 --- Chinatrust Commercial Bank
010070017 --- Citibank, N.A.
010650013 --- Deutsche Bank
010590018 --- Development Bank of the Phils.
010620014 --- East-West Bank
010130012 --- Equitable-PCI Bank
010860010 --- Export and Industry Bank
010169999 --- First E-Bank Corporation
010640010 --- Fuji Bank
010509999 --- Global Bank
010060014 --- Hongkong Bank
010560019 --- Intl Comml Bank of China
010660016 --- Intle Nederlanden Bank
010710018 --- Korea Exchange Bank
010350025 --- Land Bank
010220016 --- Maybank Philippines, Inc.
010269996 --- MetroBank
010110016 --- Phil. Bank of Communication
010080010 --- Philippine National Bank
010090039 --- PhilTrust Bank
010150018 --- Prudential Bank
010280014 --- RCBC
010140015 --- Security Bank
010050011 --- Standard Chartered Bank
010299995 --- UCPB
010270189 --- United Overseas Bank Phils.
010330016 --- Veterans Bank