I have a question to pose to the readership, and if anyone out there can answer this question, I’d really appreciate it. I’d like to know what I have to suck to get five minutes of decent customer service from my bank. Who do I have to sleep with? Because if I have to sleep with someone, I’ll do it. I’ll let one of the VPs film it if it means I don’t have to stay on hold with the wire department for forty-five minutes. Do I have to give up my first-born child? Cut off a finger? A breast? Tell me. I want to know. I want to know precisely what I need to lop off before my bank will pretend that I matter to them as a customer. I don’t need all these toes. I can compromise. I just want to call the bank and talk to an actual person, an actual person who can find his or her own ass without the aid of a private detective. What do I have to do?

In the last few days, I’ve spent many hours on the phone with various sub-humanoids employed by my bank, attempting to figure out the origins of a mysterious sum of money. This sum arrived in my account in the middle of last month via wire, but I didn’t find out about it until my bank statement arrived, and the bank statement told me exactly nothing except the amount and the date. As you can imagine, I found all this rather unnerving, because if the money did not actually belong to me, I did not want to write checks against it and have those checks bounce; if the money did belong to me, I thought I should have heard about it before three weeks went by, for tax reasons, and also because I did not want to phone up various freelance editors and leave passive-aggressively sweet messages on their voicemail, only to find out later that they had in fact paid me. So I phoned my bank’s 800 number.

I suspect that my bank has designed its automated system specifically to discourage customers from seeking help. Callers to the Republic Line have to suffer through an epic menu of prompts, each prompt leading Hydra-like to another double handful of prompts, all recited excruciatingly slowly by a bland person of indeterminate gender. Upon dialing the number, a caller like me hears a full paragraph of welcome, followed by an invitation to press the pound key for more information on the takeover by HSBC; a lengthy silence ensues, probably to provide me with ample time to mutter something along the lines of “any day now” or “get on with it, for god’s sake,” which I always do, or to press the zero key frantically before the first eighteen-item menu pops up. The menu asks me to choose my bank, which I do. The next menu asks me to choose which kind of account I have, which I also do. Then I must enter a six-digit number from the back of my ATM card, my PIN, the last four digits of my account number, and the last four digits of my Social Security number; then I must spell out my mother’s maiden name using the keypad, spell out my own full name using the keypad, and play “Mary Had A Little Lamb” using the 4, 5, and 6 keys. Naturally, if I misdial at any time during this ridiculous rigmarole, I get dumped at the “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you dialed. Goodbye!” prompt and booted off the system, and I have to begin all over again. If I successfully enter all the information requested, the bland person intones, “Please hold while we access your account.” I sit through a recitative of the amount on deposit, the amount available, the amount in cushion credit, and a number of other probably inaccurate – and in any case, wholly irrelevant – amounts, including the disparity between the amount on deposit and the Trump fortune, the square root of the amount, blah dee blah. Happily, I can use this time to make a cheese sandwich if I have laid all the ingredients out on the counter beforehand, because I know better than to press the zero key by now.

Cheese sandwich in hand, bank statement in front of me, I must now decide what kind of information I would like. Most recent ATM withdrawals? Most recent credits and deposits? Most recent checks and debits? Savings? Money market? I hazard a stab at the zero key at this time, hoping for a live person; no such luck. But I don’t get booted off the system either, so I press the key for most recent credits and deposits. Apparently, in Republic Bank World, “most recent” actually means “every single one since the first of the year,” because I have to endure a litany of bi-weekly deposits, all droned out in the same halting monotone, for about five minutes. I press the zero key: nothing. I press the pound key: nothing. I press the star key: nothing. I wonder what the “flash” key does and press it – AUGH! Well, now I know the flash key resets the dial tone. Dammit.

Back to the beginning I go. By this time, I’ve finished the cheese sandwich, and it’s a good thing I thought to make it, because I’ve wasted a good hour on this already and I haven’t even tracked down a flesh-and-blood person yet. Okay, menu, numbers, amount on deposit, most recent deposits, yadda yadda yadda. Please let zero factor into this next menu. Please. Please. Yes! I hit zero. The bland person tells me he will connect me to a Republic teleservicing representative. “Teleservicing” sounds like a euphemism for something kind of disgusting, but I don’t mind, because I have deluded myself into thinking that now I’ll get to talk to someone, someone real and alive and non-bland, and I’ll get this whole thing sorted – hey, where did the hold music go? Hello? HELLO? You can’t just hang up on me! I didn’t even hear the “goodbye!” thingie! I didn’t press the flash key, I swear! Hell! O!

Back to the beginning I go. Again. Now an hour and a half has elapsed, I have crumbs all over the front of my sweater, and I have started muttering, “Oh, fine, FINE, that’s FINE, just – GAH!” and the cat is eyeing me suspiciously. Menu. Numbers. Amount on deposit. Most recent deposits. Zero key. “Teleservicing” (ew). Hold music. At last, a human being – or something masquerading as a human being – picks up and asks how they can help me. I don’t want to alienate the first living thing I’ve gotten on the line after all this time, so I breathe deeply and inform “Mrs. Smitty” (actually a spider fern with a headset on) that I didn’t receive notification of a wire transfer and I’d like to know what happened. “Sure,” she says, and then she asks me for my account number. And my name. And my address. And my mother’s maiden name. And I have to play “Mary Had A Little Lamb” for her too. Then she tells me, “Well, it looks like you had a wire transfer come in on the 27th.” I point out as mildly as I can manage that I know that, and that I just told her that, but that I need to find out where it came from so I can balance my checkbook. Mrs. Smitty gets all bent out of shape and tells me she doesn’t know, and I’ll have to call the wire department. She doesn’t connect me to that department; she doesn’t give me the number. No, she hangs up on me.

After indulging in some primal scream therapy which sends the cat scuttling into the bathroom, I dial the extension for my branch. The piece of plankton who answers the phone doesn’t know the number for the wire department. I ask her to find somebody who does know, and to put that person on the phone. Fifteen minutes later, the branch manager picks up and tells me that I should call another branch, because I didn’t open my account at the first branch. “But – can’t you just give me the number?” I wail. The branch manager reads off the number of the other branch and hangs up on me. I stare at the phone, which I have had to hang up so that it can recharge its batteries, smoke forty cigarettes, and try to steer my mind away from the procurement of a pistol. Once the phone has recharged, I dial the number of the branch where I opened my account. Wrong number. I call Information. The operator doesn’t pick up, so I don’t have a chance to tell her which branch I need, so she gives me the 800 number. I call Information again. The operator doesn’t have a listing for an HSBC branch at that address. I tell her to look under Republic. She gives me a number. It’s disconnected.

I have now begun to sob uncontrollably. The hands on my little wind-up desk clock inch closer to the end of the business day as I once again dial the 800 number. I enter all the information they want, I get to the zero key, I get to the potted plant answering the phone, and I ask for the number of the wire department. Miraculously, the potted plant knows the number, gives it to me, and offers to transfer me. “Thanks very much,” I mumble numbly as the phone rings.

“WIRE DEPARTMENT.”
“Uh – hi, hello. I’d like to know the origin of a wire transfer, and I’d also like to know why I didn’t get notification of the wire in the mail. [silence] Because I’m supposed to. Get notification, that is. [silence] And I didn’t, so I thought I’d, um, call. And sort it out. [silence] Hello?”
“WHO IS THIS?”
“Okay, this is Sarah Bunting. My account number -”
“WHO GAVE YOU THIS NUMBER, MISS?”
“Well, I was told to call the wire dep -”
“WHO GAVE YOU THIS NUMBER?”
“See, I called the 800 number, and they told me -”
“WHO GAVE YOU THIS NUMBER?”
“Um, okay, see, I wanted to know about a wire transfer, so the branch manager -”
“WHO GAVE YOU THIS NUMBER?”
“The lady at the, on the, um, the hotline. [silence] Hello?”
“WHY’D THEY GIVE YOU THIS NUMBER?”
“Because I had a question about a wire transfer, and the lady seemed to think -”
“WHO IS THIS?”
“This is Sarah Bunting. Now, if you could just -”
“THIS AIN’T A CUSTOMER NUMBER, MISS. [silence] MISS? THIS HERE AIN’T A CUSTOMER NUMBER, MISS.”
“I want my mommy.”
“SHE AIN’T HERE.” Click.

I call back to my original branch, crying like a tiny child, and more or less tattle on the wire department for hanging up on me and not helping me at all, and after a while I calm down, but I won’t let the woman on the other end get a word in edgewise, and I regale her with my whole story, that I just want to know where the freakin’ money came from and to get the freakin’ notification slips in the mail when the wires come in, and I finish up all snuffling and fuming, and she says, “I just started today. Let me put you on hold and you can talk to boss,” and she puts me on hold, and I babble into the receiver, “Oh, no, no no no no no, please don’t leave me here, it’s almost five, I’ll never get to talk to anyone, please, don’t put me on hold, nooooooo!” So Susan, the boss, comes on the line, and I have to explain the entire thing AGAIN, this time in a catatonic tone usually used by hostages who have just gotten released, and now Susan can’t find any wire transfers in the account at all, oops, she’s looking at the wrong one, giggle giggle. Yeah, that’s hilarious. Susan finally pulls up the correct information, and at long last I find out where the money came from, and yes, it belongs to me, thank god, because post-traumatic stress disorder therapy costs money, and Susan says she’ll call the wire department and call me back, and I think to myself, not bloody likely. She did call back, to my sincere surprise, but only to report that the wire department had yelled at and hung up on her as well, and she promised to get to the bottom of the notification problem, “and if you have any other questions or problems, feel free to call the 800 number.”

Yeah, I’ll do that, thanks – right after I get done smashing a lightbulb with a hammer, sweeping all the little shards into a bowl, and eating them. My bank really, really sucks. The deposit line takes forever, they keep accidentally double-charging me for ATM withdrawals, they levy a fee on my account every time I so much as open my checkbook, they hold my wire transfers illegally overnight and then don’t bother to report them to me in the second place, and I have absolutely no recourse for any of it. Nobody ever knows anything over there, and if they do they won’t tell me, and if they will tell me I can’t get to them because I don’t have the right number. How does it happen that, when I have a problem with my cable – something I could easily live without for a day or two – Time Warner sends someone right over, credits me for a free month, and has knowledgeable and friendly people manning the phones, but when I have a question about MY MONEY, I’d do better consulting the Magic 8-Ball? And don’t tell me to change banks, either, because everybody has a horror story about every damn bank in this city, so moving my money won’t help, and even if I wanted to, Republic – or HSBC, or Ship Of Fools Savings & Loan, or whatever the hell they call themselves – couldn’t FIND my money to cut me a cashier’s check in the first place. Bastards.

The bastards, in living color.
Public Enemy #1 had the right idea.

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