Can somebody tell me when banking became such a pain? The first of a two part series.

Update: My supposedly ‘resolved’ problem still isn’t resolved.

Update 2: Resolved!

Friday: my mother and I headed off to Wells Fargo—she needed to renew a CD, I needed to do some account maintenance. Specifically, I had some sort of custodial account that really needed to be put in my name (now that I’m 20). Naively, it seems like it should be pretty easy change, just remove my mom’s name from the account and make sure I have control of the money. Little did I know…

The story begins with a 20 minute wait to see a banker. Seems like nobody cares about customer service—they’ll get your money no matter how long it takes to see a banker. My mom quickly renews her CD, and we begin working on changing over the other account. It turns out that you can’t just change the ownership of the account (I could understand this for tax reasons, but the money was already in my name). So we withdraw all the money from the account and proceed to close it. Well, I guess the banker thought you couldn’t just close it—had to make some call to corporate to remove some PMA linking. Corporate tells him he could have just closed the account. That’s ok, only wasted like 5 minutes.

Then he gets out the paperwork to open a new account. Everything goes smoothly (or so I think). I sign a couple times on this machine that imports my signature into some PDF file. That’s pretty neat. He deposits the money from the previous account into the new account, hands me the receipt, shakes my hand and says goodbye. Everything went great, or so I thought.

Monday: Since I had been to the bank pretty late on Friday (5:40pm or so), I didn’t expect a lot to happen in terms of processing until maybe Monday or Tuesday. But, feeling lucky, I log onto Wells Fargo Online, just to see if the new account had shown up. It hadn’t. I called the 1-800 number, talked to another banker, who kindly told me that since it had been so late on Friday, it’s really like it was processed on Monday, so check back tomorrow.

Tuesday: Check online, the account still not there. Call the 1-800 number, I’m given the same racket and told to check back tomorrow. Oh, and they ask if I want a loan. No thanks, I’d rather just have the $5000 that has gone missing.

Wednesday: Check online, account still missing in action. Call the 1-800 number, this time I talk to a genuinely helpful banker. Instead of giving me some ‘it’ll show up eventually crap’, he plainly states that he only sees my old checking account, no new savings account. I ask if it should be processed by now, and he tells me that it should have happened essentially instantaneously. So it should have shown up on Friday of last week. So you can make the inference that those bankers I spoke with over the phone on Monday and Tuesday were just too lazy to deal with my problem. He asks for the account number of the new account I’ve opened and says he can’t find that account anywhere. He puts me on hold and checks into it further. Wow! What a helpful guy! He tells me I’ll have to head back to the branch office, to see if they can figure it out.

Back at the Branch Office, I sign in at the desk and proceed to wait my 20 minutes to speak with a banker. During that time, several other people came, signed in, and then left without seeing a banker because the wait was taking too long. Great job at customer service! (Sarcasm). Eventually, I get to see another banker. I like meeting with people in person—then they can’t give you the run around or just lie to you to get you to go away. This guy was very helpful as well. He pulls my information up, shows me the lists of accounts he sees for me. It’s clear that this new account disappeared some how. Armed with the receipts and new account number, he proceeds to try to track down the problem. I get myself a water and read most of a Sports Illustrated. He comes back and says, good news, we’ll get that account created for you. Just sign this form (again, since I had already signed it on Friday). Ok, your account has been made. Now we just need to find the money that’ll go into it. Hmm. Well, I’ll try calling this place that keeps track of mis-posted transactions. He waits on the phone some more. They start looking for my lost transaction. Success! They find it! It’ll get credited at midnight tonight (I hope).

Thursday (Update): Checked my account online, the balance was not posted at midnight last night like I had been told. I called the banker (no more waiting in line!) about an hour before the bank opened and left him a message saying that the balance had not been posted yet. He finally got back to me a little bit before noon, saying that because of some miscommunication, the $5000 will show up in my account tonight at midnight. Let’s see if he’s right this time. Please note that Wells Fargo has had my $5000 held hostage for nearly a week now. I should complain about all of the interest I’m losing (probably a few cents), but rates are too low for it to really mean anything.

Maybe I’ll just put my money where my mouth is and move this part of my savings over to ING Direct. Their savings accounts are getting a 3.30% APY—way better than the rate at Wells Fargo.

Friday: And my money is back, only one week later.

Postscript:

• So why did this whole problem come about? The only explanation I got was that it was a ‘strange computer glitch’.

• What if I didn’t notice this for a few months? Well, the banker told me I was lucky that I caught this so quickly—it would have been much harder to track down later.

But the real question is this: Why is it my responsibility to make sure that the voodoo magic that the bank performs goes correctly. Can’t the banker tell me the truth when he says that my account was created successfully and my money deposited?