Part One is here

Sorry for the interruption in the letter, Colonial; after writing the first few hundred words I had to lay down and rest my aching head. Thursday was a long and aggravating day.

In the early afternoon hours of May 7, 2009, I phoned the Colonial Bank customer service number in Montgomery, Alabama (Why, Colonial, do you have telephone customer service that is only available 9-5 Monday through Friday? Did you know other banks have 24/7 customer service? It’s a new feature. You should look into it). Amanda, the customer service rep I was graced with that afternoon, was a Southern Belle with an accent so thick you could layer it onto a canvas with a camel hair paint brush, y’all.

Anna S., my branch manager here in Summerlin, I complained to sweet li’l Amanda, is screwing with me three ways from Sunday and when I went over her head to the Regional District Manager, David B., well, then I was really given the shaft. Colonial reversed five overdrafts, I patiently explained, and then reduced my overdraft limit to nothing.

“Mister Jaaaaaycubbbs, I’m-a gonna put ya on hold while I look up your account and talk to mah supahvisah,” Amanda said.

And so, Colonial, I sat on hold for ten minutes, listening to your canned radio commercials; never has the slogan “You’ll Like It Here” taken on more ominous portent.

“Mister Jaaaaaycubbs, this is Amanda again. Thank you for holding. I have Anna S. from your branch on the phone with us right now.”

No! For God’s sake, no. Anna S. is exactly the person I do not want to deal with. (Are you feeling my frustration here, Colonial?)

“Mr. Jacobs,” Anna S. snapped. “I thought we had this all resolved on Tuesday. You were given quite a generous reversal of fees — after you called my Regional District Manager — and there’s nothing more we can do for you.”

“Anna, my account has been red-lined against overdrafts and I’m sitting on disconnect notices for my utilities since that $783.00 in fees I paid in April has created an extreme hardship. I’m a mere  two hundred dollars short meeting my bills this month, not to mention that I’m short on grocery money. I just need an overdraft limit imposed again; without that, I cannot pay anything in a timely manner.”

“Mr. Jacobs, you agreed to that limitation on your account in April when Miss M called –”

Miss M is the assistant branch manager at my local Colonial Bank office; she called my home on a Thursday afternoon in April, alerting my co-signer on the account that the account was overdrafted.

“Would you like me to put a temporary freeze on the account?” Miss M had asked. “That way you won’t get eight dollar a day fees until you resolve the overdraft.”

My co-signer agreed to the freeze as a temporary measure but now Anna S. was trying to claim that I had granted approval for the account to freeze up anytime it went into arrears, in perpetuity.

“There’s something I don’t understand here, Anna: the Regional District Manager told me that you asked for the zero tolerance overdraft mandate but you’re also saying that we did it to ourselves when my co-signer on the account agreed to a temporary freeze back in mid-April.”

No answer. Dead air on the telephone. “It can’t be both ways,” I continued. “I think we’re done here. Thank you.”

Here’s where it gets funny, Colonial, a sort of comedic riff on Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder.

“I am so sorry for this, Anna,” I heard Amanda coo when the bank reps mistakenly thought I had hung up the phone.

“He’s been calling twice a day,” Anna lied. “I understand his frustration but we simply cannot bend over backwards for customers like this. I understand that times are hard but they’re hard for banks, too.”

“Oh, I know,” Amanda purred. “It’s rough out there and it sounds like he’s living paycheck to paycheck.”

“He is.” And then she lied again: “I told him he might consider removing his direct deposit from our bank if he wants to avoid having fees offset by it.”

Anna yammered on and on and on to Amanda about bank fees and fee reversal policies, proving that she had not been paying attention to me one whit. I was done bitching about the fees, my complaint was that my complimentary credit limit had been sucked into a dark hole.

“Well,” said Amanda, “I’m a-gonna make a note in his file here that indicates he’s a chronic complainer and that should he call us again with this same problem we will try to control the call here in Alabama and not let him have access to any bank officers.”

TO BE CONTINUED