I’m trapped with a shitty bank and won’t go into the reasons here.
This is what happened: I called to pay the bill. The idiot at the bank gave a pay-off quote that included interest charges of less than $2, even though the bill was not due yet. There should be no interest in this case. He would not listen. So I’m like, fuck it, I’ll pay what he quotes and then dispute the interest charge when it comes.
The billing system did the right thing… did not charge interest. So of course I ended up with a tiny credit <$2. The asshole bank could not just let that small credit sit because there is a business advantage if they zero out all positive balances to increase the chances of a negative the next month. So they mailed a paper check for the credit.
It’s not worth my time and effort to cash a check so small. But I’ll also be damned if I let that be a donation to the bank. So I just sat on the check until it became stale and worthless. The check is bad, but the bank still owes me the money. So then I call the bank to say: hey, don’t bother sending another check, just credit my account with that amount, toward by current balance. The banker refused. In fact, the banker tried to say the money was gone – that I lose it because it’s my fault the check is bad. I know that’s not how it works. The check goes bad but the debt does not. The bank still owes me the money. Customer service genuinely seemed clueless about that.
I spent 90 minutes on the phone arguing over this. Customer rep had to repeatedly check with management. In the end, the bank still refused to credit the account but they agreed to send another check. WTF. I guess I will just repeat the pattern until they learn.
Customer service is not cheap. Someone once told me what the bank pays per minute on phone support. I don’t recall what the figure was but it was shockingly high. I wonder how much this tiny check will cost the bank as it sits in limbo and causes repeat customer service calls, in a loop.
Find a credit union.
Why put yourself through this stress? They fucked up. They made you whole. You can’t do mobile deposits? Or get to an ATM?
Sounds like a lot of needless anxiety and stress for you over $2.
If you think it’s over the money, you’ve missed the plot.
There is an ethical problem with how they operate. If you let them get away with their shenanigans, you support them. I will not. Fuck banks. And fuck their shenanigans. When they pulled this shit, it became my ethical duty to cost them. Their postage cost exceeds the value of the check, and their phone operator costs are high. So I’m happy to ensure their profit-driven exploitation backfires fully.
Mobile deposits: most banks have scrapped remote deposits via web. Most banks are happy to exclude those not on their exclusive smartphone ecosystem and try to push you into Google’s walled garden to obtain their forced-obsolescence app (so Google can know where you bank after getting a mobile phone subscription in order to activate a Google acct). Anything to cattle-herd boot lickers onto the bank’s closed-source spyware app is part of their game. The ethical problems with this could fill a book.
I tried hacking together an Android emulator to take a JPG of a check and emulate the camera within the android v/m using the linux gstreamer tool. I tried that back when I was willing to briefly experiment with a closed-source bank app I exfiltrated using Raccoon. Shit didn’t work with the banking app… it was too defensive. I was lucky the app even ran on the emulator. Many banking apps detect the emulator and refuse to run.
Can’t reach an ATM for deposits from overseas. But also, when I am in the country, it’s a long drive from the house to an ATM.
So deposits by mail are the most sensible in my situation.
They fucked up. They made you whole.
The idiot who charged the interest was just the first fuckup. And it’s not a significant fuckup. The notable fuckup here is the deliberate corporate-wide policy in how they deal with small credits that leads to a paper check in the mail. It’s the shitty policy that disables them from fixing their fuckups. A fuckup is fine if they can fix sensibly. But this is not the case here.
IIUC, it’s what the Scots call a running goat fuck… which is fuck up after fuck up on top of fuck ups.
You’re goddamn right!
Having a strong ethical and moral framework can suck sometimes…
Thank you for doing this
Yeah, sometimes being right isn’t worth the time and effort.
Of course being ethical is almost always at odds with convenience. Corporations know this, and they exploit it. Most people have not read Tim Wu’s “Tyranny of Convenience” essay. If folks were not so clung on to convenience, corporations would get away with fewer shenanigans.
Seems like a waste of time to me. I’ll think of you next time I’m on hold for the next bank customer service rep.
If bank incompetence costs you time (because someone like me won’t let incompetence fly), consider changing banks, if you’re not trapped.
The first sentence doing a lot of lifting here. Actually trapped?
Dude can’t get up the willpower to cash a two dollar check, you think k they have the motivation to change banks?
if you still think all of this was about money you missed the point
If you think my comment was about money, you missed the point.
The guy is a prideful dumbass who’s letting their own ego ruin their life.
I would have closed my accounts and moved them to a credit union.
In no way are you trapped with a shitty bank. And honestly, were this a community designed for it, you’d be getting a lot of “you’re the asshole”.
No customer service isnt cheap, and you’re the guy making wait times over an hour.
In no way are you trapped with a shitty bank.
You’ve obviously never been a vegabond. And probably also don’t have much of a grasp on the KYC shit-show pushed by banks now.
No customer service isnt cheap, and you’re the guy making wait times over an hour.
Happy to do so. There is a shortage of consumers who won’t let incompetence fly. Like I said, it’s a shit bank. If the service downgrades because of something I did and other customers bounce because of it, this is a good thing. I couldn’t hope for more.
OTOH, the banker learned from me how checks work, and thus will be more competent the next time a customer would otherwise get boned by a banker who thinks debts vanish when a check expires. The banker’s training came from a customer taking up a phone slot, but that banker will be more effecient on this topic and faster going forward.
