Well, this
will be long. And whiny.
Apologies
to those who feel like reading it.
And to
everyone who understandably skips it, it is simply an explanation for my semi-absence.
It has
taken way more of my energy and will to live than I like to admit.
I trust
everyone know by now that banks are pure evil and will happily bring the world to a
ruin just to make more money, right?
I had a
small loan in a Danish bank for a combined purchase of a great laptop and an
apartment I lived in with an ex boyfriend.
It was a small
one too. Even with fees and interest it wasn’t a lot. In fact, out of everyone
I know, only one person doesn’t have any loans, and out of the rest, mine was
the smallest.
I couldn’t imagine
so much trouble could come out of so little money.
Some months
back, my bank suddenly emails me that they want a bunch of documentations from
me. And I do mean a bunch: Scans of my driver’s license, passport, ID, tax
documents for last year, a whole list I can’t even remember.
I’m
naturally confused and start gathering it all up. But oops, my passport is
expired (Haven’t travelled to a country where I would even need it for about
two years so I simply didn’t think about it. I guess that’s the problem with
the EU, hah.) and there is this one document I can't get out of the government
self-service website. When I log in there, I have to pick what county I live in
in Denmark
I was
confused over the sudden demand from my bank already, so I decide to call them
and inform them about the passport, the paper and ask what the whole thing was
about anyways.
Big
mistake. I don’t get any information. At all. Instead, they simply lock down my
account.
Completely
rational response, right?
I now can’t
access my account, take money out or even pay any bills.
Luckily all
my monthly bills go to the auto pay system and my Hubby can cover expenses at
home. Very luckily indeed, or my bank would have completely screwed my life up
and I would probably be homeless by now.
I inform
them of this. They don’t care.
“My” bank
lady sort of just avoid answering anything and keep telling me the same shit
about how “She understands and will see what she can do, but she have to ask
her supervisor.” Right. We all know she just takes a 15 minute coffee break and
then return with a fake sympathy and “I’m so sorry but he said no.”
I call and
email them almost daily but they don’t pick up and I don’t receive any answers
to my questions. I ask them if it would solve the problem if I pay more off per
month, if they could switch me to another account type, et cetera et cetera. It
is all ignored.
I’m
honestly completely bewildered at the whole thing. I have paid off my interest
and fees dutifully every month. In fact it’s been running over the auto payment
system, so it has never been even an hour late.
Finally
they threaten me with a debt collecting firm if I don’t pay the loan back right
this second.
Because,
obviously people who have the option of paying off a loan from one day to
another actively choose to pay fees and interests, right? It is just because
people enjoy having a loan in a bank, right?
I’m pretty
sick and tired of their shit and reply with “Fine, do that.” Because I just cant
imagine a debt collecting firm being worse than the treatment I’ve received from
the bank so far.
But oh, no,
they can’t “just” do that. They have to send me, multiple, multiple warnings
over the next couple of months while my account is still locked down. Because,
you know, that’s the law. Or something.
In
frustration I complain to my dad about it.
My dad
tells my mum, my mum tells my granddad.
My granddad
decided to interfere.
He likes to
do that a lot. I can tell you many, many stories that are far more amusing than
this one about his “helpful” interferences.
My granddad
calls the bank.
The bank
has absolutely no problem dishing out my very personal information to some more
or less random person who calls them and claims to be related to me.
The
supervisor to “my” bank lady tells him that:
A) We have
had a dialogue about this.
What? Where
was that dialogue? They told me to give them a bunch of documents and after
that, refused to answer any questions.
B) That we
have had said dialogue for the last half year.
What the
actual fuck?
And C) That
the problem is, I’m no longer a member of the union that is part owner of the
bank.
Huh. I haven’t
been a member of that union for… Dunno, years? And it hasn’t been a problem so
far. But all of a sudden it apparently was, and they can’t be bothered to
explain this to me?
And how exactly
had they imagined I could become a member of the union again with my account locked
down?
Or, was it
rather that they don’t have any interest in actually solving this problem?
Luckily my
granddad thinks the bank supervisor-guy is “Full of shit” and “Annoying as
seven hells”.
My granddad
decided to pay my loan out for me so I can switch banks.
Thank you
granddad!
The greedy,
evil bank charges him about 1000 kroner (Around 135 Euro and 175 USD for my
international readers) extra for… I honestly have no idea. I honestly wouldn’t be
surprised if there was a fee for finishing your loan because uh-oh, now they
wont make money off the interest anymore! Poor them!
Today comes
the punch line:
My phone
bill has just been paid with the auto payment system and since I have been on
the phone so much trying to sort this out, it pushed my account into minus…
Prepare to gasp here… 44 kroner. That is just under 6 Euro and almost 8 USD. Gasp!
After not
having heard a single word from them for like a month, not even after my
granddad paid the loan off, I now receive an email from them asking to pay the
overdraft.
I could use
bank opinions though: The bank I’m moving from is Lån og spar bank and I’m
considering Nordea (Have heard a lot of bad about that one actually, but they don’t
charge for taking out money in Nordea ATMs and since they are all over Scandinavia
and I travel a lot between Denmark and Sweden, it might save me some money) or
Handelsbanken (Because it has great ratings on Trustpilot and I’ve heard a lot
of good about them.)
