Dear Ms BankerCall Centre Bank Person,
There's a reason why the building in London's financial district is decidedly phallic.
I am writing in response to the five text messages, three emails, and two answering machine messages you have left for me within the past 24 hours.
I appreciate your attention, but wonder if perhaps, it was just a little, too much. Just a tad.
You see, I’m not really into you.
I see our relationship as one of convenience. It’s a two way thing. You promise to give me all the convenience of telephone banking, internet banking, and a variety of options for insuring my cat, dog, left gold filling, and I release all the money I have to you.
It’s like a marriage, without the sex.
And, like marriage, typically it works ok. I go about my business making money and you go about your business ignoring me, and we are pretty much ok in an old married couple kind of way. Until, of course I need something from you, like a temporary overdraft and then it all goes a bit pear shaped.
You bring out the hoops, and jumping horse box thingy that I was always too short to jump up and over, when I was a school kid in my blackwatch tartan PE rompers. And like school days, you manage to make me feel just a little bit small.
Like a pimple. On an ant. A dead ant.
Inevitably you decline to lend me some money because after listening to my protestations, (“I’ve been with you for over 4 years since I arrived. I put sh*t-loads of money into my account when I moved my accounts from NZ..”!) you have determined that I really need the loan.
Ergo, I am not qualified to have one.
But, I am good at managing rejection. I can continue on my merry way, screwing blood out of stones I find on the street and selling my soul (not my body, yet!) to get the moolah in the door. And I hear didly squat from you, which is mind-numbingly fine.
Then, a few things go tits up. I need money for the teenager’s prom dress and an unexpected trip into London and a couple of jobs don’t come off, and my account slips into the overdraft. Not by much (we’re talking hundreds not thousands. In the singular not plural) and all of a sudden I’m getting messages of undying love from you 24/7
Someone’s turned up the onhold music and the strains of The Police’s ‘I’ll be watching you’ messes with my head as I wait for someone at the call centre to pick up the phone. When she gets around to it, she answers as if she’s a long lost friend, not at all like someone who has royally screwed me over and now wants the blood splattered garments they left me to die in.
After the security hoopla has been successfully negotiated (“What was your mother’s grandmother’s maiden name?” How many pets did your Aunt Gladys have in her lifetime? What was your bust size in 1992?) we get to the matter at hand.
Yes, I am overdrawn. Sorry about that but I notice that you haven’t actually processed the bank draft I put into the account…the one that would clear the balance.
She thinks I lie.
She’s never heard of the bank draft.
After a few simultaneous heart attacks and fifteen minutes on the phone she finds the bank draft. No, it still hasn’t been cleared (a week later!) We discuss this for a moment, and she seems fine and then she hits me with the questions.
Why were you overdrawn? (Because you haven’t processed the bank draft maybe?)
Will it happen again? (Hell I don’t know, you tell me)
And then she starts with the sales pitch. Would I like online data storage. (No, I have Drop Box). But I defer to her enthusiasm and ask for details. Of course I need to know if it will cost, which it does. So I ask her why on earth I would be interested in spending more money automatically out of my account!
She’s quiet for a moment. Perhaps she’s consulting her call centre ‘how to sell’ manual. And then she launches into a barrage of questions about my business. I stop her and as nicely as I possibly could I say…
“Look, I’m sorry do I have to answer all these questions now. You see I’m trying to work for a living. I’m trying to make some money so that I won’t go into overdraft and hopefully, God willing and the planets being in alignment, I will NEVER HAVE TO CALL YOU AGAIN”
Does anybody else have a hate-hate relationship with their bank?
Image: Flickr CC
