Friday, August 3, 2007

I love this old lady.

A SENIOR MOMENT A 98 year old woman wrote this to her bank. The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the New York Times. Dear Sir: I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three 'nanoseconds' must have elapsed between his presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Social Security check, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank. My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become. From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by check, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you ust nominate. Be aware that it is an offense under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Notary Public, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof. In due course, I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press buttons as follows: 1-- To make an appointment to see me. 2-- To query a missing payment. 3-- To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there. 4-- To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping. 5-- To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature. 6-- To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home. 7-- To leave a message on my computer (a password to access my computer is required. A password will be communicated to you at a later date to the Authorized Contact.) 8-- To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 7. 9-- To make a general complaint or inquiry, the contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call. Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement. May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year. Your Humble Client

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

With the housing market, mortgage and interest rates, and the general economic slow downs, banks are making up their losses in fees. They employ fewer customer service reps because disembodied cued sound bytes that are programmed to pretend to be human cost a lot less. Some banks even charge you a fee to use a teller as they prefer to do everything electronically.

It is now standard practice for some banks to hold all deposits until midnight and run all debits through first, reordering them from the largest to the smallest to maximize the number they can bounce, charging you $30 - $38 for that card swipe at the donut shop for $3.25.

Gone are the days when the bank called you at home and said "hurry down, you need to deposit $2 to avoid bouncing this check".

It's evil and unfair - Occasionally I just call them and rant uncontrollably and then I giggle at the number of different answers I get to the same question since there are no rules - the bank does pretty much what it wants to do.

glenniah said...

So basically, keeping a bank account and making deposits is really what is keeping us poor. A former Prime Minister of ours once said, "You will be better off keeping your money under the bed." Hmmm, perhaps he was more correct than we think.
Glenni