Thursday, August 16, 2012

Seniors Banking!

Thanks, M'reen.... Also, wish I'd thought of this myself first!!  TGIAF! 

Seniors Banking... PRICELESS!!
Shown below, is an actual letter that was sent to a bank by an 86 year old woman.
The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the Times.

Dear Sir:

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month.

By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it..

I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years.

You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally answer your telephone calls and letters, --- when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.

From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.

My mortgage and loan repayments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate.

Be aware that it is an OFFENSE under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope.

Please find attached an Application Contact which I require your chosen employee to complete.

I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative.

Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Notary Public figure, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, at MY convenience, I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me.

I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service.

As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further.

When you call me, press buttons as follows:

IMMEDIATELY AFTER DIALLING, PRESS THE STAR (*) BUTTON FOR ENGLISH

#1. To make an appointment to see me

#2. To query a missing payment.

#3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.

#4 To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.

#5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.

#6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.

#7. To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required.

Password will be communicated to you at a later date to that Authorized Contact mentioned earlier.

#8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 to 9

#9. To make a general complaint or inquiry.

The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.

While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.

May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous New Year?

Your Humble Client



And remember:
Don't make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.

16 comments:

  1. Linda9:28 PM

    This is so funny! I sent it to my mother, too.

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  2. I love it. I'd love to work this out for real, but I don't have the technology.....

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  3. Anonymous12:18 PM

    White entertaining, the above letter is one of several versions that have been floating around for several years. According to Snopes, the origin was an article written by Peter Wear for the Courier Mail in Brisbane, Australia, in January 1999.

    Even had the letter been true, how can one fault a bank for bouncing a check when sufficient funds were not in the account?

    It sounds like a letter that I would wish to write to blow off steam; but, hopefully, over something that was not my own fault.
    Still laughing--
    Cop Car

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  4. I don't care who wrote it or when. It's funny as hell and hits the nail on the head. Because my funds are also automatically deposited, my bank does allow for at least a brief grace period, thank goodness. When you're out of food and out of money, which happens to a lot of us living on SS, you don't have a lot of flexibility that last day or two before the funds are deposited. Eating is healthy.

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  5. My enjoyment of this began to tremble a bit when I did the math....this is an "actual letter"? sent to a bank by an "86-year-old woman"?? right. so why has she had her retirement annuity deposited in that bank for only 8 years?! or does/did she switch banks often? Or did she retire late, as I did (not THAT late).

    yes, CC is right....the bank can indeed sock a depositor with a late fee if there's no $$ in the account to cover a check when it arrives. but most good banks don't do this. or they refund it. that's what mine do. a good bank always has a living person in there somewhere keeping track of the numbers and computerized goings on.

    some banks these days are just going hog wild, though, charging fees to depositors for using the bank's own ATMs!! I suspect this happens more often to VERY SMALL DEPOSITORS than it does to people who park a lot of their money in there. (I'm no fool, of course....the majority of my funds are offshore!!) (In a small, wet sock tied to a pier on the east coast of the U.S.)

    tsk. so dreary. the one bank i know i can depend on is my TIN CAN, into which i dump a certain # of $ every day and dip into it only when i really, really need it. this usually happens a day or two before the SS arrives, as Ms. Parsley cited.

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  6. Okay - this is a spoof, but it is so close to the truth that it's hilarious. Dealing with telephone menus is the bane of my life as I use a captioned phone and the captions don't keep up with the recording.

    I was charged $75 by a bank for late charges on 3 checks when I made a $100 subtraction error. There was enough funds in my account to cover two of the checks, but the bank chose to take the largest check from my balance first, thus making all 3 checks bounce. So did I laugh at this spoof? You bet! Loud and clear.

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  7. darlene....that's a horrible ploy on the bank's part. glad you could laugh at it!!

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  8. What can I say??? This is priceless! I must copy it for possible modification and adaptation the next time I have a bank problem, or am just plain "regusted" (that means having been disgusted more than once, in case you're wondering about the word.)

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. In case you're wondering what I said that had to be deleted -- lots of X#/! words!!! No, for some reason my comment printed twice. Had the writer and problem been real, I can agree that "technically" it wasn't the bank's fault -- but considering they have the use of said writer's cash 'til spent by customer -- they aren't paying interest likely, so I think it's highway robbery and just because such acts are legal does not justify such tactics -- furthermore, the deck is stacked for the bank, so I would demand satisfaction.

    Am so relieved to hear you're doing your banking offshore. If I lived closer to the ocean (am actually less than an hour away, I'd do the same.) Have considered atmospheric banking, the wave of the future, and may hang my funds from a tree.

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  11. joared: there's a song about that, isn't there? or is that about yellow ribbons?

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  12. P.S. real life banking encounter:

    yesterday i went into my "new" bank to ask WHY i was being charged $2 to use my new bank's own ATM!? their first questions were "did you use your BANKORAMA (alias my new bank) card and PIN?" And "Are you sure?" I restrained myself from saying, "Of course i used my Bankorama card and pin to get my money out of the Bankorama ATM!" I didn't think it was possible to get my Bankorama money out of Bankorama's ATMs with another bank's card & pin. (If this is possible, I'll be starting my world tour of Bankorama banks tomorrow). i dunno. I know it's possible to use another bank's card and pin to get $$ out of Bankorama's ATM, but I also know I have to have money in an account in this other bank.

    Anyway, today, thinking back on the episode, I went online to my Bankorama account and discovered about half of the ATM usage fees charged in actual fact against my legitimate Bankorama account by use of a Bankorama ATM have been deleted. NO MONEY HAS CHANGED HANDS, of course. My balance is still the same. but the fees are gone. Now you see it. Now you don't!!

    I know Citibank is considered one of the big bad banks, but I have to say that they never pulled crap like this on an old lady! They were always very ACCURATE and polite and nonweasely. Back to the tin can and the small, wet sock (hope it's still there when we hit the shore next month!!)

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  13. That is great!!!!

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  14. Loved this! I have nearly as much joy from my bank, which so thoughtfully provides me with three or four different balances on the same account on my laptop, mobile app or ATM. Which one is right? Who knows?

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  15. Loved this! I have nearly as much joy from my bank, which so thoughtfully provides me with three or four different balances on the same account on my laptop, mobile app or ATM. Which one is right? Who knows?

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