I have this name: Philip St.Jean. I do have a middle name, but that’s not important right now. I have received mail as “Mr St” – I throw it out, because that’s not my name, nor am I a street. But I digress, as I also get mail as “Mr Jean”, and several other variants. I also get phone calls these ways, but I digress again, I just hang up because I know they don’t know me.
So today around 2pm I went to the bank where I have an account. My bank is part of a larger network of banks “joined” together, which is why they are probably all called credit unions in this case. Anyway, I can go to my bank and using funds in my account, make a payment on a loan that I have at another bank. They call it something like shared service banking. I don’t get charged for the transaction.
I’ve done this same transaction at the same location several times in the past with no problem. It’s a nice feature, especially when the other bank is located hundreds of miles away.
But then the policy changed! Seems if the name on the accounts don’t match between the two banking entities, my bank can refuse to process the request. Which is what happened today. Whoa there horse. I have account numbers at each bank, and I know the numbers for both. Seems to me if my local bank has my funds in my account X, and they know it’s me because I have a picture ID (my license), and I want to pay account Y at the other bank, then they should just do it. Never mind that my bank says I’m “Philip St-Jean” and that the 2nd bank in this transaction said I might be “Philip J St.”. My middle name is “James” – neat, just throwing that out there. Yeah, my license has “Philip J St Jean”. So which one am I?
Well that was rather long.
Anyway, the teller looked a bit uncertain what to do, walked to a corner room, and came back with a letter of sorts that had the “policy” on it. I briefly read it. What nonsense. I spoke out and said “call them”, meaning the teller to call the other bank while I waited. I had plenty of time. Another teller leaned over and looked at the “policy”. I guess they concurred because I was basically told that I’d have to call the other bank and come back when my name was fixed at the other bank.
I know my last name has caused issues for some computer applications for quite some time. I have lived computers since the 1970s. I understand the thought process of a programmer whose surname might be Brown – isn’t that right Patty?
But, in any event I wasn’t going home to call the other bank because my name doesn’t need fixing. I was thinking “It’s my money, just send it!”. Actually I was thinking if that’s what they want me to do, then I’m going to close out this account before I leave. Not that it’s a large account. It’s the principle – the service, and that’s what I was there for.
After about 10 minutes, this ended up getting resolved locally by the lady in the other office who gave her authorization. I think that lady was human and not a robot, but I have no proof. A nice one though. I surmise some teller training should be conducted to go along with policy changes, not to mention some possible feedback to the bank IT department for a potential problem ticket.
Thankfully, I have a sense of humor. Don’t bother sending the survey form, just read this, and move on.