Brazilian, here. For some personal reasons, I accrued some debt. Nothing eye watering, specially when converted to dollars, but nevertheless a quantity that has to be paid. I’ve been in talks with the bank over possible ways to make it a bit more palatable, and in typical fashion they’ve been unhelpful, uncooperative and largely pretend I don’t exist until it’s time to make a payment. Well, just now, they cashed out too much money before I got to pay (for the stated purpose of paying the debt), so I can’t actually pay the damn thing. As a result, I’ll have to go through all sorts of hoops and probably get a huge hit to my financial situation, possibly even pay legal fees, all while they sit on their moneybags and do nothing. They also chose to do it at the worst possible time of the year, when everybody burns their cash to buy trinkets for each other, so I’m not even sure how I’ll get the money.
TL;DR: Don’t ever trust a bank.
At least you are dealing with a bank. Where I am coming from there are private creditors who are offering easy credits to anyone interested and then they hit you with unbelievably high interest rates that are almost always impossible to pay, so people are being blackmailed, and sometimes either beaten and/or losing the roof of their heads. So be grateful that you aren’t dealing with such thugs.
What you can do is actually inquire other banks what conditions they can offer you to transfer this debt to them and always prioritise your debt payments above everything else.