Further Adventures in Banking

Go Kroz! Banks are fun...
(this was supposed to be just a comment on kroz's entry but it turned into a rant of its own...)

One time they accidentally deposited $25,000 into my account. When they realized their mistake they decided the proper action to take regarding this would be to freeze my account. I had the pleasure of finding this all out on my own by being told my credit isn't worth the plastic its printed on while trying to pay for dinner at a restaurant.

When I called to freak out complain they told me what the scam deal was and said they would fix it by the next day business day, which would be tomorrow. The next day I checked my account balance and it was now at -$25,000. I drive myself down to the bank in a blindly fast rage induced calm manner to kill them all register my new complaint and I find that they were so sadistic enthusiastic about getting that $25,000 out of my account, that they decided to take it twice just to be a pack of bastards safe.

Also my accounts were frozen again because apparently a withdrawl of $50,000 in one day constitutes unusual activity for my account. So it was automatically disabled for "my protection". Again they promised to have everything fixed up by the next business day. I kindly point out to them that tomorrow is Saturday and as I keep all of my money in my bank account I have no way of purchasing food or gasoline for 3 days. (not including the day and a half that had already passed by).

They finally start to show signs of realizing that I am no longer a completely satisfied customer and think that maybe they should do something to appease me. So they do so in the form of a guilt trip by shuttling a girl out from the back who looks barely out of highshool and underfed. They inform me that the original error was her fault so she is going to personally cover my expenses for the weekend out of her own wallet and how much do I think I am going to need? As my need for food only slightly outweighs my uncomfortable weakness towards crying girls I asked for a piddly $30 to keep me from starving and being stuck at home with no gas in the car.

Needless to say a week later I was no longer a member of that bank. (and yet I said it anyways..)

Happy Banking everyone,
Rael

What am I? Chopped liver?

So, I went into the bank this morning at 10:30 to deposit my paycheque (yes, that's right, I don't have direct deposit). Anyways, I looked at my balance and it was close to $500 short of what it should be. I printed out an 'account activity' sheet at the ATM and saw two items listed as 'loan payments'. I don't have a loan, nor did I ever have one.

Needless to say I walked gingerly into the bank and talked to someone at the 'information centre'. It's cute that they call it an information centre when they don't know what the hell they're doing, but that's a side issue. I talked to the dullard behind the counter and she pulled up my account and said 'oh you don't have a loan with us', to which I replied 'that's right, that's why I'm questioning this.' She started fiddling with her computer and said that she couldn't fix it on her end and it had to go to a manager. Her only thought about what happened was either someone keyed the account number in wrong or someone at another branch has my bank account number (but with a different transit number).

She gave me her card and a 1-800 number that I had to call to follow up. Personally, I think they should have taken the initiative and called ME to make sure everything was right. It is called 'customer service' after all, isn't it?

I waited a while and decided to call again at 12:30, since I was told to follow up. All the customer service agents were busy so I left a message. So I waited...

and waited...

and waited...

Finally I got fed up and called again at 1:30 and was told by the previous dullard that 'oh I'm busy with a customer, can you call me back?' (I was thinking to myself 'Well what am I? Chopped liver?) To which I replied 'I already left a message an hour ago and nobody called me back.' She replied 'well I was on my lunch break.' It was on the tip of my tongue to blast her, but I figured that probably wouldn't get me anywhere so I gave her my phone number and waited.

I got a call back about 10 minutes later and she said 'well it hasn't been reversed yet, but it will be done today.' So I said to her 'well it's the start of a long weekend, I need this rectified now.' She told me I should call the 1-800 number and get it sorted out...I didn't tell her what I thought she should do. ;)

I called the 1-800 number and actually spoke to someone whose head isn't up their arse. He knew about the problem, told me he had to speak to his supervisor and he'll get right back to me.

Lo and behold, I got a call back rather promptly. He was very apologetic and told me that the problem was, someone with sloppy handwriting wrote out the number and the teller read the 3 as a 5. That's gotta be some funky handwriting to confuse those, but whatever.

Long story short, the amount is back in my bank account.

YAY!

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Licking Kitty

As I'm sitting here bored out of my mind at work I thought I'd share one of the ways I periodically use to liven things up a bit that you can do during all that regen time. The girls around the office love it, and I love giving it to them.

Licking Kitty:
http://60gp.ovh.net/~cleanyou/

Seniors discount...SENIORS DISCOUNT?!

So, my hubby and I decided to be wild and crazy and get in the car on Saturday and head out of town. We headed towards Kingston (a city roughly three hours east of Toronto).

We had a nice drive and got into town around 12:30 on Saturday. We drove up the first hotel we saw which was a nice Holiday Inn.

Since we left on the spur of the moment, we didn't have a reservation at any hotel. Anyways, he went into the hotel, gave his credit card to hold a room, and he was told to come back at 3:00 for check-in. He was told that they were going to give us a room with a king sized bed and a couch. It seemed nice so we decided to go for lunch and come back in a couple hours.

We had a nice lunch at the hotel and sat outside and watched the boats sail by. After lunch we walked around a little and then went back to the hotel for 3:00 for check-in. We went up to the desk with our bag and he went to talk to the same clerk that took his credit card number.

She started clicking on the keyboard and looked up at us and said 'Oh, it seems that someone scooped the room that I was holding for you.' We looked at each other and then at her and my hubby said to her 'I gave you my credit card number and you were holding that room for us. What happened?' She said 'I don't know, the other clerk must have taken it.'

The whole situation reminded us of the scene in Seinfeld when Jerry wanted to rent a car...

JERRY: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?

RENTAL CAR AGENT: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.

JERRY: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.

RENTAL CAR AGENT: I know why we have reservations.

JERRY: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.

At this point we were both kind of annoyed with the sitaution and decided to pack up our stuff and head to the next town, Ganonoque. It's a small town of about 5,000 people on the shores of the St. Lawrence River. It's a really quaint city with a lot of charm.

We went to the Best Western and we were told that they only had one room left, but it wasn't in the actual hotel, it was behind it. It turned out to be a small, private cabin for $180 a night plus tax, it was a bit steep but we decided to take it. We took the room and it was actually quite nice, considering we didn't have a reservation. It was now 4:00 and we decided we wanted to go into the main part of town and see what there was to see.

We went down to the water and decided to take a one hour cruise and see the 1000 Islands. We bought our tickets and walked over to the docks and looked around. Since we had so much time to kill, we decided to try some homemade ice cream. Mmmm gotta love that. ;)

We walked around some more and all of a sudden we saw a bunch of very nicely dressed people coming towards us on a bridge. It was a very small bridge, you couldn't pass people on it. Basically you had to either walk sideways on the bridge when others were on it, or you would have to wait until it was clear and walk quickly.

Anyways as we were approaching this group of people, it quickly turned to be a wedding party. The bride had to walk along this very narrow bridge with a very poofy dress on. You'd think that someone would have driven her to the boat or done something so she wouldn't have to get her dress dirty, but whatever.

We watched as the bridal party got on the boat and they went out for a one hour cruise. They came back a little late so our cruise started a bit late, which was no big deal, but some people that were going to be on the later cruise with us were getting antsy because when the boat came in, the wedding party decided that then was a good time to start taking pictures, which inevitably delayed our cruise longer. I was on vacation so I didn't really care one way or the other, I knew we'd get out on the water eventually. :P

The cruise was spectacular and just long enough, we saw several of the smaller islands and quite a few gorgeous cottages on them. When we were out on the water we noticed that it was raining on shore, and we were thinking that we were going to get drenched on the cruise, but thankfully (or luckily) the clouds swirled around and missed our ship.

We got back to shore and we went out for a nice dinner and then went back to the hotel.

When we checked out this morning, my hubby went into the lobby and handed in our keys. He was a little taken aback when he looked at the bill and the total was $150.00 including tax. He didn't question it, but I asked to see the bill when he got back to the car.

Next to the price was a discount line that said 'Seniors discount 30% off'. Just when you didn't feel old enough. :P