Elder Banking..PRICELESS!
Posted by Dobrien 3 years, 4 months ago to Technology
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 New York Times.
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Dear Sir:
I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month.
By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check 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 check, 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, 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 modeled 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:
Elder Banking
IMMEDIATELY AFTER DIALING, 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 through 10
#9. To make a general complaint or inquiry.
The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.
#10. This is a second reminder to press for English.
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.
The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the New York Times.
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Dear Sir:
I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month.
By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check 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 check, 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, 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 modeled 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:
Elder Banking
IMMEDIATELY AFTER DIALING, 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 through 10
#9. To make a general complaint or inquiry.
The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.
#10. This is a second reminder to press for English.
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.
Money talks. We have almost no loans and a good amount of investments with our bank. They provide a different level of service, and a special number. This works wonderfully. We get a person, and even if they need to transfer to another department, they stay on the line and manage the transfer so we get good service, not a robot-person with a checklist.
Can only assume the lack of real competition in banking is causing the crap service, described to and responded to in the posting. This is just another outcome of socialism, even the amount banking and medical industry has, and more is coming.
It's like living in a town where the council are afraid to raise taxes, so they now get most of their revenue by fining people for nitpicky things that are none of their business, like having laundry on a line in your backyard. A town like that is predatory and deserves to go under, and so do those banks.
I was fortunate enough, to secure a position in one of the important banks in New York. I lived there. I lived through the conditions which led up to what is known as the crash of 1929. I witnessed what is tantamount to a collapse of the structure of the United States as a whole.
Much to my surprise, my superiors, in the middle of the panic in which they were immersed, confronted me. I was confronted with the question, "Norm, what do we do now?"
I was thirty at the time, and I had no more right to have an answer to that question than the man in the moon. However, I did manage to say to my superiors, "Gentlemen, you take this experience as proof of something that you do not know about banking." And you better go find out what that something is, and act accordingly.
Four days later, I was confronted by these same superiors, with a statement to the effect that, “Norm, you go find out.” And I really was fool enough to accept that assignment, because it meant that you were going out to search for something, and nobody could tell you what you were looking for. I felt so strongly on the subject that I consented to it.
I was relieved of all normal duties inside the bank and, two and a half years later, I felt that it was possible to report back to those who had given me this assignment. So, I rendered such a report and, as a result of the report I rendered, I was told the following: "Norm, what you are saying is, we should return to sound banking." And I said, “Yes, in essence, that's exactly what it is that I am saying.”
Whereupon, I got my first shock, which was a statement from them to this effect: "We will never see sound banking in the United States again." And they cited chapter and verse, to support that statement.
What they cited was as follows: since the end of WWI, we have been responsible for what they call the institutionalizing of conflicting interests. And they are so prevalent inside this country, that they can never be resolved.
This came to me as an extraordinary shock because the men who made this statement were men who were deemed as the most prominent bankers in the country. The bank of which I was a part was spoken of a Morgan bank. Coming from men of that caliber, a statement of that kind made a tremendous impression on me.
The type of impression that it made on me was this: I wondered if I, as an individual, as what they call a junior officer of the bank, could with the same enthusiasm foster the progress and the policies of the bank. I spent about a year trying to think this out, and came to the conclusion that I would have to resign.
I did resign. As a consequence of that, I had this experience. When my letter of resignation reached the desk of the president of the bank, he sent for me. I came to visit with him and he stated to me, "Norm, I have your letter, but I do not believe you understand what has happened in the last ten days." I said, “No, Mr. Cochran, I have no idea what's happened.”
“Well,” he says, "the directors have never been able to get your report to them out of their minds and, as a result, they have decided that you, as an individual, must begin at once, and you must re-organize this bank in keeping with your own ideas." He then said, "Now, can I tear up your letter?”
And inasmuch as what had been said to me, what he was offering me, at the age of (by then) thirty-three, was about as fine an opportunity for service to the country as I could imagine. I said, “Yes.” And they said they wished me to begin at once, and I did.
Suddenly, in a span of about six weeks, I was not permitted to do another piece of work. And, every time I brought the subject up, I was kind of patted on the back and told, "Stop worrying about it, Norm. Pretty soon you will be a vice-president and you will have quite a handsome salary, and ultimately be able to retire on a very worthwhile pension and, in the meantime, you can play golf and tennis to your hearts content on weekends."
Well, Mr. Griffin, I found I could not do it. I spent a year, figuratively, with my feet on the desk, doing nothing. I just couldn't adjust to it. So I did resign. This time my resignation stuck.
Then, I got my second shock, which was the discovery that the doors of every bank in the United States were closed to me and I never could get a job, as it were, in the bank. So I found myself for the first time since I graduated from college, out of a job.”
Me dino shall find that tip most helpful should I ever call there while suffering from a rattlesnake bite, clutching at my chest in agony or spurting blood all over the place.
I CAN talk to a human by punching 0 who is the receptionist. So I can actually talk to someone real should I encounter a problem with the answering machine I like to call a robo-nurse.
Why can't some of those lawyers be the ones who get Muslim fatwas putting prices on their heads?
All golfers should live so long as to become this kind of old man!
Toward the end of the Sunday service, the Minister asked, "How many of you have forgiven your enemies?"
80% held up their hands. The Minister then repeated his question. All responded this time, except one man, Walter Barnes.
"Mr. Barnes, are you not willing to forgive your enemies?"
"I don't have any," he replied gruffly.
"Mr. Barnes, that is very unusual. How old are you?"
"Ninety-eight," he replied. The congregation stood up and clapped their hands.
"Oh, Mr. Barnes, would you please come down in front and tell us all how a person can live ninety-eight years and not have an enemy in the world?"
The old golfer tottered down the aisle, stopped in front of the pulpit, turned around, faced the congregation, and said simply, "I outlived all them assholes."
Then he calmly returned to his seat.