There are many old stories on the internet you may have not have read and some are pretty interesting too like this one about an 86 year old angry lady’s letter to the bank in 2003.
Don’t you just hate calling the customer care of any service be it a bank, consumer company or phone provider and listening to endless options saying, press #1 for this press #2 for that. Just when you think you have pressed the right option and about to get somewhere, that option will again have a number of options. Can’t the idiots give a direct line to a customer care executive because after all, the countless options ultimately lead to the same person handling the call?
It is infuriating no doubt and gets on peoples nerves which is exactly what happened to this old lady whose check bounced due to insufficient funds. This 86 year old woman writes an angry letter to the bank telling them just what she thought of them. In fact she actually put the problem of options to them from a different point of view and it is hilarious. Everyone reading this will relate to this problem. But the best part of everything was that even the bank manager found it funny and published it in the New York Times.
Image Source: www.beautythings.info
She starts off by explaining how her check which she paid her plumber with bounced due to lack of funds. However she also says that it was just a couple of Nanoseconds that had lapsed till funds arrived into her account to honor the cheque. This is stupid of course but because of technology today, the advantage of human insight and positive assumption is lacking in every sphere on industry.
She had a pension that was automatically debited to her account every month. She sarcastically praises the bank for penalizing her $30 for the bounced check but also thanks them for seizing the opportunity to do so. “You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank”.
In the next para she is truly irritated by the banks innumerous options provided when trying to contact customer care, she says she will handle all her transactions like her mortgage and pension personally with an employee of the bank. She is well and truly fed up of having to deal with recorded voice messages that get you nowhere near a customer care service until you are not ready to start raving and ranting and are well and truly enraged.
Now she tries to show the bank how stupid their own documentation and endless formalities are. Although a bank does require such documentation, it sometimes wears you down to go through pages and pages of meaningless words when all it could take is a summarized version of what you need to agree to.
It seems the press 1 and press 2 option maze has really gotten her goat. These people are lucky she didn’t come down to the bank waving her umbrella at them. She now decides to let them know the stupidity of such a system where every service makes it as difficult as possible for customers to get in touch with them. It’s downright funny because she says she is doing this for the good of the bank and “As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
This is where she really gives it to them letting them know how furious this stupid option playing game gets to customers. Every single one of us have been in this old woman’s position where you just can’t seem to get the right option to lead to someone to talk to. It seems these guys intentionally make it difficult so that there will be fewer complaints.
That’s exactly how she ends her letter asking the bank not to piss her off. She doesn’t leave anything out and even speaks about the damn irritating music that keeps playing in the background when you are waiting for someone to answer the call. This 86 year old woman who wrote an angry letter to her bank really told them off. Her ending is truly classic where she says “Don’t make old people mad. We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off.”