Annoyance...

I gotta say my bank sometimes annoys the crap out of me! Now I know everyone has said that at least once about their bank, so this is not necessarily "blogworthy"...

I must preface this by saying I am more often than not satisfied with my bank and would recommend it's services to most people. I won't say the name here, as it isn't relevant to my current rant.

What I friggin' hate (and by the way, this can apply to my utility services such as cable tv, electricity, etc.) is when I become completely at the mercy of a computer. For example, with my bank I have two checking accounts, and to help me with the organizing and budgeting of my meager funds, I have setup automatic account transfers which move money from one account to another on a preset schedule. The problem lies in that the transfer is automatic, and if I don't have enough money in the account I will be hit with exhorbitant overdraft fees. Realizing this situation was about to happen (ahhh... life), I called my bank with a pre-emptive strike. "Can you simply skip the next transfer?" I ask.

The long and short of it is the customer service person can cancel the automatic transfer, but is not sure (60/40 she tells me) this will stop the immediate transfer scheduled for the next day. My logical response is: "OK, if that happens, can this simply be corrected without me having to be slapped with overdraft fees?"

Again, the basic answer is we are at the mercy of the computer. If it decides to apply an overdraft fee, I have to contact my branch directly and the manager can perform a "courtesy refund". Great, so not only am I at the whim of a computer which is using a program with apparently very little overriding capabilities (NICE programming!), but then I become the pawn of a Bank Manager who may or not have the appropriate level of caffeine/blood ratio required to keep him in a good mood and on my side.

Here is another example of the "at the mercy of the computer"...

Last weekend my checking account was running on the low side (nothing new), but I received my small stipend check for my acting gig. I deposit it on Saturday night, and if you look at the summary of my check register (online), my balance never drops into the negative. My bank has a deposit policy which says when you deposit a check, the first $100 is immediately available to you, the rest must wait until the end of the next business day (Monday night for a Saturday deposit). So, in need of a little cash, I take $75 out of what I deposit. Again, the check register online never shows a negative balance, yet by Tuesday I am hit with THREE overdraft fees because of the methodology/process by which the computer analyzes deposits and withdrawals. The customer service person simply said "It's not technically the bank's error, so you would have to have your branch manager reverse the charges via "courtesy refunds".

I understand and can relate to our dependence on computers, but when have we become so dependent we can no longer think outside the box? Overdraft fees make sense if the bank is basically paying your checks for you when the money isn't in your account. But why is there no room for the spirit of the law to override the letter of the law?

To expound on this, when things have been tight (financially), I have found myself occasionally faced with ugly decisions, some of which manifest in a letter saying basically "Pay up or lose it!" Again, If I call and say "I will take care of the payment on such and such date, and I will pay any additional late charges with may occur..." I have been typically met with "Well, if the computer schedules an interruption of service before your payment clears, then you are subject to re-connection fees." Again with the spirit of the law versus the letter of it. Now if late payments were the norm or if the customer didn't make any efforts, then the fees make sense. But customer service needs to be able to override a computer's "schedule" when necessary, if such means avoiding re-connection and late fees as warranted, not to mention interruption in services.

Oh by the way... the rain here in Sacramento? My fault... I washed my car on Friday. AARGH!!!