Mr Grumpy

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By Mr Grumpy - Thu 1st Nov 2012

 

Banking : I look back with dewey-eyed nostalgia to a time when communicating with my Bank of choice was so much easier than it is today.

I recall with fondness to a time when I could speak in person on the phone with a guy pretending to be called Kevin from Wolverhampton (but who was actually Mohammed from Calcutta) who would tell me my balance after putting me on hold for half an hour to the strains of some god-awful pan pipe music playing in the background.

Life was so much simpler with "Tele-banking", however, the consumer became the loser as the fat cat bankers found the appeal of "Internet Banking" too hard to resist.

It would be so-much more convenient, so quicker and easier, infinitely more secure, they promised us as they consigned a couple of thousand call-centre operatives to the scrap heap.

So after my Bank in Spain finally embraced the 1990's (early in 2012) and offered me an Internet Banking service, I decided that I had an important decision to make :

1) Choose to communicate with the cold, impersonal and inflexible internet Banking system.

2) Choose to continue dealing with my Bank staff in person.

After literally seconds of deliberation I quite clearly decided that internet banking was the lesser of the two evils. For one, my local Bank was only open around 3 hours per day, with 1 member of staff and zero parking anywhere close by.

For two, In the 8 years I had banked there they have struggled to understand Castilian (preferring instead to speak with me in Valenciano) and have been known to mess up a number of transactions by assuming that the instructions that I gave them were incorrect and interpreting them as they saw fit.

So, upon enrolling for internet banking some months ago now, the Bank Manager proudly gave me my user name and seemed confused when I asked for the password (especially as the letter he handed me clearly stated that I should ask at my branch for my secure password).

A few weeks later, with a "secure password" (which also stated my user name !!) arrived by unsecure snail-mail (Work that one out if you can ...)

However today I have received a letter advising me that my internet banking "has been suspended" - no reason, no apology, no details on how to reactivate it...

Time to call the Spanish equivalent of Kevin in Wolverhampton / Mohammed in Calcutta for an explanation. I might get more sense than speaking with My branch manager, Pepe down the Pueblo.