Honesty seems like a good idea until it is actually put into practice, especially when dealing with money. For some unknown sin (I am sure it is not my fault) my formally competent bank has turned into the International Bank of Trolls.
The first hint was when they stopped having people answer the phones – you could only communicate by pushing buttons for a few minutes, then a person would appear. Then they drastically limited the times in which you could reach a person. Now this sort of nonsense is common, but tell me – did you bank give your money away to another bank?
Yes, that’s what mine did. One day I had savings for retirement all nicely listed and the next – the money was at a DIFFERENT BANK, different website, different log in, different everything. A bank I had never heard of and certainly did not trust with my money.
I had to put up with it because living overseas makes money transactions more difficult, so I decided to wait until I was home over the summer to switch banks.
Then they canceled my credit card because of fraudulent charges, all right – it had to be done but as I waited for my new card, more charges were added, even FOUR WEEKS after that card was canceled. I got in touch and they said, “yes, that happened sometimes.” I said, “but the card is canceled, how could more charges have been approved and added?” The person said, “Well, we can’t always control that.”
A huge international bank and… they can’t keep track of credit card charges – that’s a fact that I would not like to know. I honestly wish she had lied to me.
The next time I called was during the holidays – the money I had sent from here had not arrived (usually takes 12 hours, this had been 5 days) and I had the following conversation:
“Where is my money?”
“We don’t know.”
“How can you not know, I sent it to you five days ago.”
“Sometimes money is in transit and it doesn’t show up on our computers. Check later today.”
“And if it’s not there?”
“Try tomorrow or the next day.”
“It’s been 5 days – this usually takes about 12 hours and it’s a lot of money, is there anything else you can do or say?”
“No.”
[Sigh – time to pull out the Karen] “Do you think maybe bad elves took it? I heard they are teaching computer hacking skills at the North Pole.”
Silence. “You might want to check your account around 12. Sometimes money comes in at noon.”
“Is that when Santa drops by?”
Silence.
“Do you think it would help your computers process faster if you poured some egg nog on them?”
Silence.
“Look, I am missing thousands of pounds and ‘check tomorrow’ is not a helpful response.”
“There is no way to know where your money is.”
“Well, I know ONE bank that’s getting lumps of coal in its stocking.”
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