Bailie.com

Thursday, June 28, 2007

What on earth is going on at VanCity?

Don’t get me wrong - I have been a loyal VanCity customer since I moved to Vancouver many years ago. But the past few days have been quite ... let’s just say that I’d might as well be dealing with Big Ugly Bank. First, I walk down to Branch 10 to make a deposit. I get into the business line-up. There are 2 people in the line-up, and 3 people in the general line-up. The teller says to the business person ahead of me, “Sorry, I’m going to take someone from the other line-up.” Hmmm, so what is the point of having a business line-up? Isn’t the point that we have to get back to our businesses? OK, so one doesn’t have to be a genius to be a bank teller. But wait, it gets better. They deposit my money into another company’s account. So evidently, being able to read the numbers off the deposit sheet isn’t an employment requirement, either. Well, I hope that English comprehension is.

Anyhow, calling the customer service line yielded the following comedic routine:
“Hello, I have a problem.”
“What is your account number? Name? Date of birth? Password?”
“Hold on, I’m in a public place.”
“What’s the problem?”
I explain the problem.
“Oh, let me call the branch.”
(on hold)
“Hello? Hello? Hello?”
Sound of the customer service rep hanging up.

This situation repeated itself twice, until I told the third person that he could help me by not putting me on hold. And they assured me that Barbie (or Muffy, or DragonLady, or whatever her name is that made the mistake) would try to fix the problem today.

I really hope that Mercury goes out of retrograde soon, because my loyalty quotient dropped significantly today, and I really don’t want to have to switch banks.