This is three years old, but it’s the first time I’d seen it.
12 thoughts on “An Amusing Story”
Should have paid the dollar, and then the bank would be obliged to spend around $10 to get a refund of $0.40 to her..
Mail them a check for $0.40. Really put the screws in.
The bank probably spent more than $10 just pushing this up the chain of command. They probably should get some code monkey to run a search of the database each year for minuscule balances of this sort and send the list to the beancounters to zero out.
If they write it off, it’s a loss. If they let them ride, it’s an account receivable and hence has ‘value’.
Never mind reality
I’ve still got a retirement account with Fidelity that has $0.07 in it. They wouldn’t let me transfer it out, or close it out, or even just abandon it. Someday they’ll realize that sending me mail about it every year costs them more than that.
Banks are notorious for being staid, stodgy, hidebound and slaves to procedure. They do nonsensical things for illogical reasons, and it’s all because the real decisions are all made by regulators, not by your helpful customer service rep or her supervisor.
As a result, those worthies’ ability to respond to unusual situations is firmly circumscribed and restricted, and so it’s not at all unusual that the banks end up spending amounts far in excess of the amount owed, to collect said amount.
Regulators don’t care about the banks’ stockholders or their depositors. It’s up to the banks to accommodate their market within the straitjackets they donned when they opened for business, and to recoup their losses by whatever means they can manage.
Thus, low interest on savings, and high fees.
Thus, low interest on savings, and high fees.
To get around that, until recently they’d offer bonuses– deposit $10,000 and let it sit for three months and get $300. And you get the normal 0.25% for three months before you cash out. Credit cards that would get $500 if you spent $5000 in 3 months. A way to add several thousand a year on one’s cash reserve and on payments you would make anyhow, like medical “insurance” payments. All of that has disappeared in the last year.
My accounts still have benefits, but the savings interest is still pitiful. I can remember when passbook savings accounts used to draw over 5%, but those were the days of Whip Inflation Now and the Misery Index.
Who knows? Maybe those days are coming back?
Thus my local credit union, with whom I opened my $5 “membership savings” account solely to get their microscopic interest rate on a motorcycle loan 5 years ago, instituted a policy that any inactive savings account with a balance of under $30 would have a $30 monthly fee attached and if the balance zeroed out, the account would be closed.
I let them keep my $5 because I had better things to do than round up 25 more just to drive across town and deposit it at their institution to keep my account. They spent significantly more than $5 in postage over the last few years since I paid off the note; it’s the least I could do.
If you didn’t recognize the name, this appears to be the same Quinn Cummings who played the daughter in The Goodbye Girl, followed by a season or two of Family, after Kristy McNichol started to age out from her appointed role in the plot factory. I remember reading long ago that she had gone and done some businessy thing and put a product out there. So this is where it all ended up. Good for her, I guess.
Yep, that’s her. I remembered the name too. Her IMDB bio mentions the HipHugger thing. She was a cute-as-a-bug and quite good kid actress who seems to have left The Biz three decades ago at roughly age 25.
When I was in college, I had a very hard-to-comprehend issue with my bank. I’d just gotten paid (by check) which gave me enough, barely, to meet the bank’s 5k minimum for a high yield CD. The check was for around 1/3 that amount.
So, clueless kid that I was, I deposited the check at a teller window, then went to see a banker to open the CD. After all the paperwork was done, the banker told me, “Sorry, we can’t do this until the check clears, which won’t be until tomorrow.”. I had other things to do the next day, so didn’t want to wait.
I checked the teller receipt, which showed “available funds”. It showed the full amount – so no hold on the check, or so I thought. The banker explained; “That’s because you have a business account. You can write checks on the full amount, but not do transfers, such as moving the money to another account.” I asked if that meant I could write myself a check and cash it, and she said yes. Could I write a check to open the CD? “No, that’d be a transfer.” So, thinking I was in the twilight zone, I said “be right back”, went to a teller window, did a cash withdrawal, and returned to the banker’s desk with the cash. We then opened the CD.
This makes absolutely no sense from their point of view (me taking cash is a risk to them if the check bounced, me opening an account with them is not), but it happened. It opened my eyes to the fact that the world often makes no sense at all.
Should have paid the dollar, and then the bank would be obliged to spend around $10 to get a refund of $0.40 to her..
Mail them a check for $0.40. Really put the screws in.
The bank probably spent more than $10 just pushing this up the chain of command. They probably should get some code monkey to run a search of the database each year for minuscule balances of this sort and send the list to the beancounters to zero out.
If they write it off, it’s a loss. If they let them ride, it’s an account receivable and hence has ‘value’.
Never mind reality
I’ve still got a retirement account with Fidelity that has $0.07 in it. They wouldn’t let me transfer it out, or close it out, or even just abandon it. Someday they’ll realize that sending me mail about it every year costs them more than that.
Banks are notorious for being staid, stodgy, hidebound and slaves to procedure. They do nonsensical things for illogical reasons, and it’s all because the real decisions are all made by regulators, not by your helpful customer service rep or her supervisor.
As a result, those worthies’ ability to respond to unusual situations is firmly circumscribed and restricted, and so it’s not at all unusual that the banks end up spending amounts far in excess of the amount owed, to collect said amount.
Regulators don’t care about the banks’ stockholders or their depositors. It’s up to the banks to accommodate their market within the straitjackets they donned when they opened for business, and to recoup their losses by whatever means they can manage.
Thus, low interest on savings, and high fees.
Thus, low interest on savings, and high fees.
To get around that, until recently they’d offer bonuses– deposit $10,000 and let it sit for three months and get $300. And you get the normal 0.25% for three months before you cash out. Credit cards that would get $500 if you spent $5000 in 3 months. A way to add several thousand a year on one’s cash reserve and on payments you would make anyhow, like medical “insurance” payments. All of that has disappeared in the last year.
My accounts still have benefits, but the savings interest is still pitiful. I can remember when passbook savings accounts used to draw over 5%, but those were the days of Whip Inflation Now and the Misery Index.
Who knows? Maybe those days are coming back?
Thus my local credit union, with whom I opened my $5 “membership savings” account solely to get their microscopic interest rate on a motorcycle loan 5 years ago, instituted a policy that any inactive savings account with a balance of under $30 would have a $30 monthly fee attached and if the balance zeroed out, the account would be closed.
I let them keep my $5 because I had better things to do than round up 25 more just to drive across town and deposit it at their institution to keep my account. They spent significantly more than $5 in postage over the last few years since I paid off the note; it’s the least I could do.
If you didn’t recognize the name, this appears to be the same Quinn Cummings who played the daughter in The Goodbye Girl, followed by a season or two of Family, after Kristy McNichol started to age out from her appointed role in the plot factory. I remember reading long ago that she had gone and done some businessy thing and put a product out there. So this is where it all ended up. Good for her, I guess.
Yep, that’s her. I remembered the name too. Her IMDB bio mentions the HipHugger thing. She was a cute-as-a-bug and quite good kid actress who seems to have left The Biz three decades ago at roughly age 25.
When I was in college, I had a very hard-to-comprehend issue with my bank. I’d just gotten paid (by check) which gave me enough, barely, to meet the bank’s 5k minimum for a high yield CD. The check was for around 1/3 that amount.
So, clueless kid that I was, I deposited the check at a teller window, then went to see a banker to open the CD. After all the paperwork was done, the banker told me, “Sorry, we can’t do this until the check clears, which won’t be until tomorrow.”. I had other things to do the next day, so didn’t want to wait.
I checked the teller receipt, which showed “available funds”. It showed the full amount – so no hold on the check, or so I thought. The banker explained; “That’s because you have a business account. You can write checks on the full amount, but not do transfers, such as moving the money to another account.” I asked if that meant I could write myself a check and cash it, and she said yes. Could I write a check to open the CD? “No, that’d be a transfer.” So, thinking I was in the twilight zone, I said “be right back”, went to a teller window, did a cash withdrawal, and returned to the banker’s desk with the cash. We then opened the CD.
This makes absolutely no sense from their point of view (me taking cash is a risk to them if the check bounced, me opening an account with them is not), but it happened. It opened my eyes to the fact that the world often makes no sense at all.