This happened about a decade ago while I was still a university student. One day, on my drive home from campus, I passed by the bank my account is with as I did nearly every day. However, this time, I saw numerous police cars in the parking lot and figured something had gone down.

Sure enough, when I checked the news upon arriving home, I found that the bank had indeed been robbed. There was a silver lining, though; the culprit was arrested at his home only a short time later and all the money was recovered. And when I say, “a short time,” I mean it took police less than an hour to track the culprit back to his house, arrest him, and recover the stolen money.

How did they manage to track the criminal back to his house so quickly, you ask? Well, in this case, the bank robber was incredibly dumb. How dumb was he? Dumb enough to write the note to the teller on the back of one of his own personal checks — the ones containing his full name and home address. Not only that, but he only lived a short distance from the bank.

I have an associate of the bank call.

Associate: “You need to reimburse all of my overdraft fees because I’m an employee of the bank and, as such, I am not subject to any fees from the bank whatsoever.”

Me: *Calmly* “First and foremost, I have to treat you as a client.”

She starts to cuss me out and demands to speak to a supervisor. I look at my phone and I can tell the call is coming from the branch.

Me: “Are you on the clock or are you at your branch as a client?”

She cussed me out again and once more demanded to speak to a supervisor. I passed the call to my supervisor, who then reported her to HER manager for being offensive and for taking care of personal matters on the job.

I work for a bank’s call center, in the customer complaints department. I open up a case folder to find several lengthy letters from a customer complaining about the fact that several of our branches have been painted white and other various gripes about redecoration that has taken place.

After a lengthy read, he finally concludes in letter three; his real problem is that he wrote his PIN next to all the ATMs he uses in the area and can no longer access any of his accounts as they have all been painted over.

Related:
PIN-Headed, Part 21
PIN-Headed, Part 20
PIN-Headed, Part 19
PIN-Headed, Part 18
PIN-Headed, Part 17

I recently received an unsolicited call from my bank to tell me about “exciting new account options,” which is bank-speak to sell me ones with higher service charges. Sorry, I seriously doubt anything having to do with bank accounts can be EXCITING!

Representative: “This call is being recorded for quality…” *And so on*

Me: “Good. I’m recording it, too.”

He didn’t like that.

Representative: “That’s not necessary. You can obtain a copy of my recording or a transcript by requesting it in writing and paying a nominal fee of [amount].”

Me: “If I record you myself, then it’s free and I have it immediately.”

Representative: “I can’t continue if you’re recording me.”

Me: “That’s okay by me. I didn’t ask for this call in the first place.”

That was the end of that. The funny thing is that I wasn’t actually going to record him — just f****** with you, bruh! But why is it okay for you to do it but not me?

To clarify, criminal law in Canada says that you can record a conversation as long as one of the parties consents. Therefore, if you are the one making the recording, you consented. However, you cannot secretly record two people talking in their home.

Caller: “You need to change my address!”

Me: “Let me get right on that for you.”

Caller: “I don’t want the bank to know where I live because they’re going to repossess my car! I need to throw them off.”

She didn’t quite think that through.