Rage against the Machines.
So I've had two problems steaming from technology the past couple of days.
The first was that on Friday night I wasn't able to get my mail in Netscape from my ISP.
Now for the record, I'm somewhat poor and have dial up and ONE phone line. So on Saturday when I call my ISP, each time they 'suggest' I do something to fix the problem, I then have to hang up on then, check to see if their advice was sound and then call them back. This took them about 4 times before finding out that the problem was with my FIREWALL and not the ISP.
I decide NOT to call the software company that does the firewall until today. Three phone calls, things went from bad to worse... As on Saturday I was able to browse the internet with my firewall on- now I gotta turn the firewall off to do ANYTHING on the internet.
I've decided that I'm going to wait until tomorrow for the 4th call- and borrow a friend's cell phone so I can indeed talk to these people while on-line.
However- I mention machineS plural as I also had a problem with my bank. Now a little background- I'm on the lazy side, and the way banks seem to get new customers is to EAT smaller banks. So I’ve changed banks in the past 7 years or so by NOT changing banks. See I banked with Baybank which got eaten by BankBoston, which got eaten by Fleet, which got eaten by Bank of America. Now while I’m generally against super huge businesses, I’ve accepted the bank mergers as a fact of life, shrugged and felt that this was just part of living in W.’s America, where banks can make money on you by lending your money to others, and charge you money for not having a ‘minimum’ balance. However I was NOT happy with what happened on Sunday. Basically I stupidly had some money in my ‘saving’ account instead of the checking account (where money is drawn from) to try and keep track of my money. Sadly I had misjudged things and was a bit short and thus owed the ‘credit line’ I have (for check protection). So I just transfer the money ‘owed’ from my saving account to the ‘credit reserve’. HOWEVER, since I’m blogging about this- not so easy. Basically the money disappears from my savings but is NOT credited to the credit reserve. I make sure to keep the print out slips from my banking; I make copies of these and bring them to the bank this morning.
I go to the bank, and the first thing I note is that even though there are a couple of people wanting to speak to a bank reprehensive (as opposed to a teller) there’s a bank woman doing NOTHING but standing around. Once I get to the bank rep. I tell her my story about how I transferred the money and the machine didn’t record it. She tried to correct my language- pointing out that I was paying off the debt and that this was different then a transfer. That since I had done a payment instead of a transfer, that things were different- that while a transfer happened automatically, that payments were a horse of a different color and needed to be manually keyed into the system. I said that was b.s., that as I had used a local machine that seemed to keep track of the money I took out of my accounts regardless of what day it was- surely the system could keep track of my transfer, especially as it took the money out of my savings account. She got ‘offended’ by my language (b.s.) and ‘threatened’ to call the manager. I told her to go ahead, call the manager- I’d like to speak to the manager. She got the manager, and the manager told me the EXACT SAME THING. That the ‘payment’ had to be manually keyed in and that it would take a day. I told him I was quite unhappy about this- as I didn’t see the difference between a payment and a transfer. I told him that I’d wait to see what happened today and that I most likely would be closing my account tomorrow.
I was just really p.o.ed about this arbitrary rule they had. Yes I liked that as this bank was HUGE, I had atms all over the place, including NYC, but I just felt considering I have to PAY THEM to keep MY money with them, they could be nice to me. So I’m going to check on things tomorrow and odds are I’ll close my account and go to a smaller bank. They’ll have less atms and fewer branches but hopefully they’ll treat me better.
This not the first time that that branch had treated me like crap, but it'll be the last.
The first was that on Friday night I wasn't able to get my mail in Netscape from my ISP.
Now for the record, I'm somewhat poor and have dial up and ONE phone line. So on Saturday when I call my ISP, each time they 'suggest' I do something to fix the problem, I then have to hang up on then, check to see if their advice was sound and then call them back. This took them about 4 times before finding out that the problem was with my FIREWALL and not the ISP.
I decide NOT to call the software company that does the firewall until today. Three phone calls, things went from bad to worse... As on Saturday I was able to browse the internet with my firewall on- now I gotta turn the firewall off to do ANYTHING on the internet.
I've decided that I'm going to wait until tomorrow for the 4th call- and borrow a friend's cell phone so I can indeed talk to these people while on-line.
However- I mention machineS plural as I also had a problem with my bank. Now a little background- I'm on the lazy side, and the way banks seem to get new customers is to EAT smaller banks. So I’ve changed banks in the past 7 years or so by NOT changing banks. See I banked with Baybank which got eaten by BankBoston, which got eaten by Fleet, which got eaten by Bank of America. Now while I’m generally against super huge businesses, I’ve accepted the bank mergers as a fact of life, shrugged and felt that this was just part of living in W.’s America, where banks can make money on you by lending your money to others, and charge you money for not having a ‘minimum’ balance. However I was NOT happy with what happened on Sunday. Basically I stupidly had some money in my ‘saving’ account instead of the checking account (where money is drawn from) to try and keep track of my money. Sadly I had misjudged things and was a bit short and thus owed the ‘credit line’ I have (for check protection). So I just transfer the money ‘owed’ from my saving account to the ‘credit reserve’. HOWEVER, since I’m blogging about this- not so easy. Basically the money disappears from my savings but is NOT credited to the credit reserve. I make sure to keep the print out slips from my banking; I make copies of these and bring them to the bank this morning.
I go to the bank, and the first thing I note is that even though there are a couple of people wanting to speak to a bank reprehensive (as opposed to a teller) there’s a bank woman doing NOTHING but standing around. Once I get to the bank rep. I tell her my story about how I transferred the money and the machine didn’t record it. She tried to correct my language- pointing out that I was paying off the debt and that this was different then a transfer. That since I had done a payment instead of a transfer, that things were different- that while a transfer happened automatically, that payments were a horse of a different color and needed to be manually keyed into the system. I said that was b.s., that as I had used a local machine that seemed to keep track of the money I took out of my accounts regardless of what day it was- surely the system could keep track of my transfer, especially as it took the money out of my savings account. She got ‘offended’ by my language (b.s.) and ‘threatened’ to call the manager. I told her to go ahead, call the manager- I’d like to speak to the manager. She got the manager, and the manager told me the EXACT SAME THING. That the ‘payment’ had to be manually keyed in and that it would take a day. I told him I was quite unhappy about this- as I didn’t see the difference between a payment and a transfer. I told him that I’d wait to see what happened today and that I most likely would be closing my account tomorrow.
I was just really p.o.ed about this arbitrary rule they had. Yes I liked that as this bank was HUGE, I had atms all over the place, including NYC, but I just felt considering I have to PAY THEM to keep MY money with them, they could be nice to me. So I’m going to check on things tomorrow and odds are I’ll close my account and go to a smaller bank. They’ll have less atms and fewer branches but hopefully they’ll treat me better.
This not the first time that that branch had treated me like crap, but it'll be the last.
2 Comments:
At 7/26/2005 11:18:00 AM,
Anonymous said…
I hate Bank of America. Seriously. But seeing as how they're my bank I try (and it's a task at times) to be content with them. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work.
They did the most asinine thing with one of my checks a while back. I'd written a check to pay our warehouse bill and the owner called me about a week later telling me that the check bounced. I proceeded to argue with the man because I had just checked my account balance, etc. online the night before and it showed that the check had cleared. He insisted that it had not. I figured he was just crazy so, I signed on and scrolled through my online statement and there it was, they cleared the check and more than a day later they turned around and ran the check through again and it bounced, he difinitely wasn't crazy. It was all right there. I printed the statement up and headed for the bank. When I got there and finally found someone to listen to my sorry tale, they were looking at me like I was crazy. The ever so helpful woman explained to me that what I was telling her wasn't possible. Really? Well then explain this. After she went over my printed up statement she looked a bit uncomfortable. No handy explanation for that one, huh? They fixed it and amazingly I actually got an apology for their screw up but it didn't instill any confidence in me where my bank was concerned.
Now, I hate credit cards because I'll admit it, I'm really irresponsible with them but I decided to get one through Bank of America. They were my bank so to my way of thinking, it made sense that if I was going to get a credit card, I should get one through them. First they denied me for a Classic Visa card which pissed me off because I had been with them for a long time and they'd given me a car loan which I paid off in 2 years instead of 5 but they wouldn't give me a credit card? A couple months later I got one of those "pre-approved" letters for a Visa Gold card so, I called and activated it. But I have to tell you, their nit-picky, backwards policies are ridiculous. I always paid them online because it was just easier but doing that just showed me that their policies were more twisted than I thought. Let's say, I had a credit card statement that was due on July 27th and I decided to pay it today. Not good enough. According to their policy, it'll take them 2 business days to get the money from my checking account (which is with them) and deliver it to my credit card carrier (which is them). Huh? But the clencher was, it didn't take them 2 days, oh no, the money was deducted from my account almost immediately and yet they still charged me a $39.00 late fee. I fought that bad boy tooth and nail and eventually won but it was a pain in the behind. I no longer have that credit card or any for that matter, I just use my Check Card now when I want to purchase something (much to my husband's dismay).
I have dial-up too and America Online is the absolute worst when it comes to technical support. I usually end any contact with them with a raging migraine. One day I'll switch, I swear I will.
Wow, look at that, I wrote a book. Sorry about that.
~ Aimee
At 7/26/2005 09:42:00 PM,
Drew said…
No prob. thanks for the story.
Actually this was the SECOND time they messed with me- the first time they gave me the full monty and I let them get away with it- which is why this time I decided enough was enough.
The first time they messed up was at the same exact branch as the above story. I deposited a check. I did it with a clerk because I NEEDED the money in my account ASAP. A couple of days later I'm with a friend and I use my debit card to pay for lunch and it was declined. I was like huh? I apologized profusely and promise to pay my friend back. This happens on Sunday. I check my balance and I find out that they did NOT credit my account with the check. So I go to the branch and talk to a ‘representative’ and I find out that the teller had deposited the check TWICE, she then tried to fix things by canceling it, and ended up canceling the check BOTH times. Oy!
But that wasn’t the end of the story because about a week later they try to charge me $15 for bouncing a check. Because somehow it recorded that I had deposited TWO checks and only one check went through.
I should’ve stopped using the bank after that…. But I didn’t. However I’m glad I’m done with Bank of America NOW.
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