Don’t Bank On Their Bank Of Knowledge

My parents are divorced. As such, they set up separate savings accounts for me when I was younger. (They didn’t really speak to each other.) As I got older, they came under my control, and as I couldn’t be bothered, I never shut one or the other.

Finally, one account goes dormant as I don’t use it, and it takes me a while to go and close it. I decide go to a branch as I want to close it and am not sure if I can do that over the phone.

Teller: “How can I help you today?”

Me: “I want to close this account, which has become dormant. I have the letter telling me about the dormancy, ID, and proof of address, which is what this letter tells me to bring.”

The teller looks up the account and looks at my ID. She starts typing away before turning and disappearing into an office to ask someone something.

Teller: “We can’t close this account as there is still an active card on it. You need to wait until that arrives in about five to six business days, and then you can come in here with that card and close it.”

This is a problem for me as I am currently a foreign student visiting home. I’m not going to be here in a few days, so I want to get this sorted ASAP.

Me: “Is there anything I can do to get this account closed more quickly?”

Teller: “You can try on the phone.”

She then dismisses me and turns to help the next person.

I turn to my aunt who came to keep me company. She offers her phone for me to use — my foreign number would cost a bomb to use — and we sit down in the bank and try to get this thing settled.

We ring the line on the letter to find out it has been changed since the letter was sent. (I did say I hadn’t used this account for a while.) We ring the new number and start to go through the security questions. This is a problem as my aunt doesn’t have an account with this bank and, as such, there should be no security questions to answer. I hang up and am about to get back in line when she suggests we ring again and just punch in random numbers until we get a human.

Success! We are now talking to a flesh-and-blood human who is a lot more sensible than his counterpart at the bank. After a bit of confusion as to why I am using this number, I get through the security questions and identify myself, my account is found, and he starts to close it. I tell him why I am ringing as there is apparently an active card on the account.

Call Centre Guy: “Yeah, I’m looking and there is no active card here. The account is dormant. I have no idea why my colleague there couldn’t close this for you in the branch.”

My aunt and I agreed later that it was probably something the first worker didn’t know and couldn’t be bothered to find out.