Why my bank sucks, a love story

So, I know that a few of my readers are banking VPs, and I love you dearly.

But I hate my bank.

For the purposes of this post, I won't name them EXPRESSLY, but I'll just say ... they're headquartered in Pittsburgh and in the past few months bought out my lovely bank that I had been doing business with FOR YEARS with absolutely no problems.

And then THIS BANK came along and ruined all that.

Let's chat, shall we?

So, Bank 2 buys Bank 1. And I get NO notices about the change-over, how I should be doing things, when I should expect a debit card in the mail, nada. Months go by. Still nada. The website changes. My account number changes. I'm told to "keep using my card until one comes to me" every time I call.

Then, 12/9 comes around. They cancelled my old card and didn't tell me. I found out while trying to buy a pre-finals bagel. Luckily I have a credit card and debit card issued by Bank #3 where I have also done business FOR YEARS with no problems. I can still pay for things.

So, I call the customer service hotline. AGAIN. The woman on the phone has a nice Southern drawl. She tells me that oh honey they tried to send it to you and your address wasn't right or something and do you live in an apartment? Why, yes, mystery woman, I do. Oh sweetheart they sometimes can't deliver to the apartments on the first try, because the landlords have them chopped up into so many units and not all of them are registered with the post office!

I swear to the gods that the italics aren't ironic. That's how she talked.

Anyway, she was very helpful. She verified my address. She tried to process my card and have it sent to me. Turns out that the computer wouldn't let her, because it takes 3 to 5 calendar days for the address to verify. Uh, excuse me?

But it's not her fault, and I tell her this as I'm asking to speak to her manager. I indicate that I'm less than pleased that they evidently tried to send me a card, then realized my address was somehow unacceptable, then NEVER CONTACTED ME about the problem. I indicate that I know this isn't the manager's fault either, but that there's got to be a better way to do this than allowing me to realize the problem only when my previous card is inactivated.

And so on, and so forth.

So, I called back today, and got a very nice Indian woman, who processed my card order. Let's see if it gets to me.

However, Indian woman refused to order checks for me (I would do it myself, but the website for some reason HATES everything about me and won't let me order them -- I kept getting error messages). She insisted that I could continue using my Bank 1 checks, even though I now had a different account number with Bank 2. I call shenanigans. I don't want to get called in for check fraud. That's a felony, you know.

I'll be going to my local branch and speaking to a representative in person tomorrow.

Or, I'll be closing out my account and taking my business down the street. It just kind of depends on how things go.