Sports Tragedies, And Why I Love Citibank (And By Love, I Mean Hate)
I’ll hold off the (fantasy) football thoughts for another day…
Quick-hitters:
- Has anyone seen Hank lately? How am I supposed to go on with my life without getting some recipe ideas from him???
Five bucks says he’s suffering from a serious bout of indigestion from Thanksgiving dinner :P.
- There are now ten shipping boxes sitting in my living room. My poor scanner is going to get one hell of a workout in the next few days.
My Wii shall be delivered tomorrow. I still haven’t decided whether or not I was going to keep it.
- Normally, stories like this cause me to go on five-minute rants, obliterating everything and everyone involved (remember that girl on Craigslist who wanted a sugar daddy?). However, this story is just so over the top that I have absolutely nothing to say about it.
- What a horrible last few days in the sports world. First, Toronto Blue Jays’ pitcher Joe Kennedy passed away, one day after Thanksgiving (and on the day he was supposed to be a best man at a wedding). Second, we had the shooting death of Washington Redskins’ defensive back Sean Taylor, after what appears to be a fatal robbery attempt. Now, we have this story of a Cleveland Indians’ reliever who has a spinal fracture and brain trauma after his SUV got hit by a motorcycle.
Stories like these kinda make issues like PatriotGate, steroids, and gambling referees seem awfully trivial, don’t they?
Prayers go out to the families affected by all these tragedies.
- By now, my loyal readers should know how much I absolutely love loathe Citibank.
(Remember this?)
Well, I made quite a stupid mistake when paying my Citibank PremierPass bill that month. Apparently, I had used a bank account that was zeroed out to make a payment.
(Background: My bill-pay checking account of choice was my Netbank account, until I received a letter in the mail from INGDirect–they bought out Netbank recently–saying that my checking account would be closed and converted to an Orange Savings account on December 7th. I decided then to stop using the Netbank account altogether, but I forgot to unregister that checking account with Citibank. Whoops.)
Unfortunately for me, I caught my mistake a day too late, and I could not cancel it. I knew I was going to get hit with an NSF fee from Netbank, and I was fully aware that I still had to make a payment on the account. I registered my Washington Mutual checking account with Citibank, and attempted to make the same payment. Unfortunately, since the payment amount was greater than the current balance (at this time, the first payment I attempted did not bounce yet), I could not make the payment online. I decided to mail in a check.
Before I mailed the check, though, I contacted Citibank to let them know that the original payment was going to bounce. I spoke to a nice woman that explained that the payment would be electronically submitted twice, and it would get rejected after the second failed attempt. She then told me that she would make a note on my account to not attempt to debit my Netbank account a second time.
Two days later, I got notified by Netbank that my checking account was hit with two NSF fees. Obviously Citibank attempted the second debit, despite the rep telling me that she would prevent this from happening. I called Citibank, got an Indian guy, and the rest caused me to bang my head on my desk for about an hour.
(I’m paraphrasing here…please try to follow along)
Me: [blah blah…two NSFs…you were supposed to stop the second one…blah blah]
CS: There is no notation on your account that says otherwise.
Me: Well there was supposed to be.
CS: [tough crap].
Me: No thanks to you guys, I now have to eat two NSF fees.
CS: [cry me a river]
Me: Ok, fine. So when can I expect [the original payment] to bounce back, so that I could make another payment using another checking account?
CS: Sir, why would the payment bounce?
Me: [WTF??? Didn’t I already explain that the payment was made on an account with a zero balance?]
CS: Sir, the payment has already gone through, and has been credited to your account. It is not going to get rejected!
Me: [How did you get this job?] Of course it is! It’s going to NSF eventually!
CS: (repeating what he said before)
Me: (realizing that this guy is an absolute moron) Ok fine. Can you give me your payment address so that I can mail in a check to cover the initial payment that you insist will not bounce?
CS: [gives me the address]
Me: Are you sure there is nothing you can do about the extra NSF fee that I should not have incurred?
CS: Sure, you can write a letter to this address (gives me another address), and they’ll credit your account.
Me: That’s all I have to do?
CS: (pause) You can try writing to them, and maybe they’ll take off the fee.
Me: You just told me that they will…and now you’re telling me that they might?
CS: Write a letter to them, and maybe they will take off the fee.
Me: #()$*)($*!)($*!))(*(!$!()$!!!!
I called Netbank soon after, explained what happened, and the rep was willing to remove one NSF fee (which is all I was asking for!). The credit appeared on my account an hour later.
I love Citibank…as long as I don’t have to speak to their customer service.
Until next time!