Ahhh Friday night. The sweet spot of the week. It’s all downhill from here, folks! I am getting so damn old that I took a bath and afterward was reading my 24-inspired novel, Operation Hell Gate, on the bed when I got sleepy and took a little cat nap. All before 9 pm. Can you say loser? This is what happens when your husband becomes addicted to World of Warcraft. Anyone want to be my online buddy? ;)
Oh and I’m pretty miffed at LaSalle Bank at the moment. I logged into my account earlier and spotted a $25 service fee. When Joe called to ask what it was for, they explained it was due to our combined account balance falling below the threshold they have in place for our account type. This was due to us taking money out last month to put in our IRAs as well as pay off a portion of our home equity loan we had transferred over to a Discover card last year so we could lessen the interest we were paying.
We don’t recall this minimum balance rule before and learned it was instituted in July 2005. They claimed to have sent notices in the bank statements at that time. My beef with them is two-fold. First, why send such an important notice of a change in policy with the statement? They have to know a lot of people just file them quickly or even destroy them. I would think they should send a separate letter like they do whenever their privacy policy changes. Also, why didn’t they put notices up on their website so customers would see them when they logged onto their online banking account? Oh I know the answer to both those questions: they didn’t really want people to know about it. The banks make their money off those fees. They are ridiculous to boot. I have to pay them a fee because I’m not letting them use enough of my money for investments as it is? Greedy much? Plus $25 every month the balance is below the amount they’ve set is rather excessive especially considering the fact there was no threshold before and the new one is $25,000!
Joe was so pissed he had them downgrade our account type so our required combined minimum monthly balance is lower and we’re transferring the rest of the money to another bank account where we can get more interest anyway. The girl didn’t even seemed fazed by his request which to me is the worst part of all this. These companies just don’t care about customer loyalty anymore and don’t make any effort to retain their business. Near the end of the call the representative told Joe she was waiving the fee, but the damage has already been done. The money is still being transferred because when Joe first complained, that is when she should have taken action to appease a long-time customer who had a decent chunk of change invested. Oh well, HSBC will profit from their mistake now. Hope that $25 they just had to have was worth losing thousand of dollars of investment money.
How is that book? Have you read any of the other ones? I’m intrigued.
Hey! Watch who you call a loser – I was in bed and sound asleep for the night at 9 last night ;)
Jodi – It’s not too bad. Not nearly as good as watching the show, but at least they try to keep with the already-established characters and time frames. The event in this book occurs prior to Season 1. Some of the dialog isn’t believable, like when Jack tells someone to get an agent on the horn. Who says that anymore? I haven’t read any of the others although I have Trojan Horse as well.
Jenniy – It’s ok; embrace it. You’re married now. LOL!