Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Falcon - The Final Episode

This is the final act of the Falcon's incredible power to protect you even when you feel safe in his nest.

It is the closing chapter of the story related in this post.

Katie has returned home and applied for a new credit card with the Falcon - it was just way too hard for her to go elsewhere with all the links to this account.  She listened intently to her fathers lecture about rewarding bad behaviour but decide that this was the path she would travel.

She visited the branch of the crying manager and checked that the card would go to the correct address, received all the correct assurances and waited......

Well the card arrived, she phoned the number and activated it, went to a shop and used it by signing for the transaction.  All seemed good.  Since all her accounts were linked she thought she would toddle in to the branch and get the pin reset so that she could then withdraw money from her savings through the miraculous electronic connection of savings and credit account.  This was how she has always used the card - only one card but choose savings or credit.

She chose this method because the bank informed her it would take a week for the new pin to arrive by mail.

Into the bank she went armed with her credit card, duly signed on the back, her drivers licence with her photo and signature which matched the signature on the card and the simple request to reset the pin.

Can anyone spot any difficulty with this?

Are you sure this should be a simple straightforward request?

Are you aware of how powerful the Falcon's protective powers are? Remember his incredible ability to cancel a card even when a Branch Manager had identified me.

Well it appears that despite the owner of the card being present and not in Africa, and despite having her signed drivers licence with her, and despite being able to rack up thousands of dollars debt by presenting the card and signing for transactions, the Falcon's assistant could not reset the pin because to do that he required two pieces of identification and Katie only had one.  He politely asked Katie if she could go home and return with her passport to support her drivers licence in this incredible process of identification despite being in the branch where the account was opened.

If she did that then he could reset the pin for her.

I am all for the bank protecting me from my own stupidity but the Falcon and his master the mighty ANZ bank have automated things to such a degree and created so many rules that they have completely removed any chance of personal conversation and common sense to come to the fore.

Don't you realise that you issued the card on a person's word and her drivers licence - no worries about doing that.  

You would let her run up a debt to the limit of the card on her signature - no worries about that.

But to let her have access to all the things connected to the card THAT YOU GAVE HER on the basis of her photo identification apparently requires something else.

I do not understand - I will never understand why staff in branches are not allowed to exercise basic common sense in dealing with their customers.  As Kato would say

the end

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