Idiots to the left, morons to the right...

Once again I am amazed at the stupidity of the idiots working at one of my banks.

I closed an account there a month or so ago, or so I thought. I mean, when they say "OK, we closed your account" and it disappears from your online banking interface, you really have some excuse to think it was closed.

Imagine my surprise when I received a somewhat threatening card in the mail, saying it had been overdrawn, and please deposit enough to cover $----.-- that you owe us, or we'll close the account and file it on your credit report, etc.

So I called them to straighten it out.

Those idiots had essentially re-opened the account (i.e. they put it in a "pending closing" state) so they could credit the account $0.03 for an interest payment or something (I never kept more than $100 in it, so if it was an interest payment, it sounds about right). Then, because it was not actually closed (although they had explicitly told me it was), it began to accrue fees. Of course, there was no money in it to cover the fees, because they had transferred it all out when they originally told me they had closed it. That, for the short of memory, was when I had asked them to close the account. As in, "please close this account."

So the morons stopped the closing of my account (although they had certainly said it had been closed) to credit it $0.03---three bloody cents---and then slapped me with $12 or so of fees.

Then they had the audacity to send me a threatening letter for not paying the fees.

Here's an idea: when someone closes one of several accounts in your bank and you owe them some money (say, $0.03), why wouldn't you just credit it to another of the accounts they have with you? Or why not send them a cheque? Why would you postpone the closing (the one you told them had already been completed) and slap them with fees? In what universe is this a good idea? What possible customer profile does this appeal to? In what imagined reality is this good customer service? What sort of nincompoop would establish this as the correct workflow?

I mean really, how do these people remember to breathe?