So my wife has a savings account with the bank ING.
To be honest, we quite like them. Well, quite like them for a bank.
They are easy to deal with … they actually pay us some interest and they send out information on time.
So imagine our surprise when we got an email from them saying that because Jill hadn’t transacted on the account for the past 2 years, they would close it down and give the cash [which was quite a sizable amount] to the Government if they didn’t hear from her immediately.
OK … so I can sort of understand they want to check the person is still alive, but it was all a bit aggressive for my liking.
But that was only the start of the weird.
You see Jill rang ING and confirmed that yes, she was still breathing … only to told by the lady on the other end of the phone, that wasn’t enough and she had to actually transact on her account.
When Jill pointed out she couldn’t do it immediately because her day-to-day funds weren’t in Australia any more, the bank person told her not to worry because she could do it on her behalf.
And do you know what she did?
She transferred 1 cent between her ING account and her other Australian bank.
ONE CENT.
ONE TIDDLY CENT.
ONE TIDDLY CENT AND EVERYTHING WAS OK.
But it was actually much more than one cent wasn’t it.
The initial email … the phone call … the movement of money between accounts … all that adds up to way more than just one teeny-weeny Australian cent both in respects of time, money and energy being wasted.
I appreciate ING were just following the rules, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense – at least the ‘moving money’ bit.
I’m almost entirely positive the person/people who added the ‘transactional element’ to the legislation did it under the guise of ‘ensuring the account owner can be easily identified’.
Except that if the account hasn’t been used for 2 years, it’s hardly a hotbed of fraudulent activity is it?!!!
I know I’m going off on a tangent-ridden rant, but all this proves to me is that common sense isn’t that common and the people who make the financial rules are as questionable as the banks who do all they can to work around them.
Though naturally, they never try and find loop holes when it involves creating customer red-tape do they.
Thank god it’s Friday, I need a lie down.