The devil is in the details

The blame game

I was pretty upset and frustrated last night so I decided to start trying to deal with the problem then: my bank's customer service line is open until 10pm and the check people's customer service line is open until midnight. The conversations went as follows:

Call check people: "We've released the funds to your bank."
Call bank: "We have not received the funds."
Call check people: "We've released the funds to your bank. We have no idea why they don't have them. You should have another conference call with us all tomorrow."

I got very upset with all of them and decided to wait and deal with it in person this morning. It has become readily apparent that the people working the phones at night are much less informed (and perhaps much less competent) than those working during the day. I couldn't sleep (again) because I was so worried.

I showed up at the bank branch at 8:55 and waited for them to open at 9. Virginia waved me over and picked up the stack of account paperwork from her desk (apparently she made some calls on my behalf yesterday). We were unable to figure out anything else while talking to the bank people, although she did manage to speak to the "very large overdraft department" or whoever they were that called me on Monday and were investigating my account to explain that we were working on the situation. The "very large overdraft department" had/has put my account into a special status that basically means that no checks that I write will even go out anymore. Really, that's not a big deal since I haven't written a check in at least two weeks and haven't even attempted to use the checking account in the 10 days since this happened.

We decided to call the check people and do a conference call again. We got a man named Adrian (different from Adrienne, the person in charge of my account in the "very large overdraft department".) on the phone. Adrian was probably the first person from the check people who has seemed to have much in the way of a clue, and was also the first person from their institution who seemed to have any sympathy for me. Adrian asked me to give him a moment to read all of the notes on my account before he spoke with me; he was obviously impressed with how often and how long I had been following up on the problems. And then he put me on hold to investigate.

When Adrian came back, he explained that THE CHECK PEOPLE HAD LOST THE MONEY AND COULD NOT SEEM TO FIND IT. He explained how the money in the form of a check was shuttled from his company's bank to the Federal Reserve to my bank and then back through the three organizations when the check was returned and then theoretically back again when the money was re-released. Except that it sort of went missing somewhere along that route. He was sure that it was in some sort of "rejection account" somewhere, but that it would take a while to find it. He did come up with an idea for a temporary fix until they found the money, but even that was going to take until Monday, if it was feasible at all.

It finally got to the point where this was going to be an indefinite problem. I started to cry at Virginia's desk. Virginia looked very alarmed. I made Adrian re-explain the whole thing to Virginia and she practically started to cry herself about 3/4 of the way through the explanation. (She's going to have to go another weekend without any money!?) Right at the end, before she gave the phone back to me, she totally snarled at him (apparently he asked if she was satisfied with the explanation). He also apparently told her something to the effect of "It's not your bank's fault, it's not our...well, it doesn't really matter whose fault it is." which really pissed her off as well.

When I got back on the phone with Adrian, he said he was going to do some research to try to find the money and to try to find me a solution. He promised to call me back at 11 (it was now around 9:30).

Next Virginia and I went up to the teller window (with me still sniffly and looking like I had been crying). The teller was a guy named Casey, who also gets a major "nice to me" award. I wanted to cash checks from my roommates that they had already made out to me for August rent (the most important being the check from our new roommate who is moving in during August but who currently lives in Michigan...it would not be so easy to get another check from her made out to someone else) and to withdraw enough cash from my savings account to cover my portion of the rent as well. (The rent check really needed to be mailed today to make sure our landlord had it in time for Aug 1 and it is my responsibility to write the large check.) My orignial (bad, but well-intentioned) idea was to have the whole amount in cash and give it to my other roommate so that she could write the check. Eventually Casey and Virginia talked me into getting the whole amount as a cashier's check to give to the landlord. This involved the absoulute hilarity of having to call my landlord (because my roommate didn't answer) and ask him how to spell his last name with a long line of bank customers and Casey and Virginia watching. The landlord was quite confused. In the end, we got everything set, although it took about another half hour to fix because so many managers' signatures were needed to make it all work. Whenever Virginia would run away to find the manager (and with the ever growing line of customers watching), Casey made small talk and flirted with me. I couldn't tell if he was actually flirting with me or was pity flirting with me because I was so obviously having a bad time, but it was nice. He kept saying "We are the biggest bank in the country. We will take care of you. Don't worry." He even offered to go beat people up at the other bank for me. Then he realized that he was not very big and offered to make the big guy who works at the branch go beat people up for me. I felt kind of better as he kept saying "we'll take care of you" over and over again. He gave me his card in case I needed anything.

I finally made it to the lab at around 10:15. I realized pretty quickly that being as tired and upset as I was, I was not really fit for much of anything and ended up leaving pretty soon after (well, after lunch that is).

Adrian finally called at around 12:45 while I was walking home. I was not upset that he was later than he said he would call; I figured it meant that he was making progress and it just took longer than he thought. (Well, that and I don't think he understands time zones). He found the money. The federal reserve had it and apparently had forgotten to tell my bank that it was there. He really layed a lot of blame on the fed. He even made a little swipe at the government which didn't really make sense in context but he got points for trying. He also assured me that their company will bend over backwards to fix any other problems that are a result of this issue. (Banks fighting over who gets to pay my overdraft fees!) The money will be back at his bank tonight and I will be able to call them tomorrow (anytime after 6-7 am) and set up a direct electronic transfer to my bank account, which will take 48 hours. Obviously at this point I'll believe it when I see it, but the story seems too elaborate to be made up and I seem to be on the radar of people at both banks who want to solve my problem and who are actually following up. The explanation also makes sense as far as what I was hearing from the customer service people last night. So....maybe by Monday morning. At that point I will just have to go back to my bank to get the "no check status" removed. I'm not even concerned about the lack of money anymore, I figure that since I got the rent taken care of it will be okay.

My landlord happened to come by while I was home to drop off some papers and I gave him the cashier's check in person. He yelled at me for worrying. "All you had to to was give me a call and I would have been okay with it being late. It's really not worth your nerves." (It sounds better in his thick Russian accent.)

I basically slept for the rest of the day to try to calm down. I'm feeling better now and am ALL READY for Project Runway tonight.

posted by Immunegirl @ 6:26 PM