Keep your cash under a mattress not in a bank

Lee Button

What can the average person say to banks?   They are a law unto themselves. I am bewildered at the incompetence of these large corporate companies.

They build up their businesses from the hard work and investments of the ordinary working man but conveniently forget to look after them when they become "titans of industry". What happened to looking after the little fish?

It seems the big fish only look after themselves. Why have these wasteful giants not been held accountable for swinging a demolition ball through our economy? But that's not even my gripe.

I have money in the bank. I tried to buy something online and the payment was rejected. I checked my balance using my bank's website (I'm not new to this) and it stated that my balance was at "x-amount" but what I could "withdraw" was lower than the balance, however, it didn't   say why it was lower.

I tried to telephone my bank and after 4 days of inputting various numbers via my phone to verify my identity (why anyone would go through this process to check out someone else's account balance is beyond me!) I finally got through to someone, who robotically asked me even more of these so called "security" questions. The customer service advisor finally accepted that I was who I said I was and we got down to the reason why I called in the first place, and guess what? They had no idea why the allowed withdrawal amount was lower than the balance, aren't they THE BANK? Aren't they supposed to have the information that I need?

By having my money in their establishment in the first place, the bank is making more money each day by playing with it in the worldwide currency market, so shouldn't they at least provide a service that is useful to me in my day to day life? Do they make up this stuff as they go along?

Why is it in this day and age, with the technology we have at our finger tips, the government has the ability to see what terrorist Osama Bin Laden's mum is eating while on her veranda in a little village in Uzbekistan, but we cannot find out what has been withdrawn from our accounts until the next day, even with a phone call?   

This isn't the first time I have had these bank troubles. My account has been "cloned" three times in two years, with sums withdrawn from them without my pin number, not large sums, but my money nonetheless. Aren't banks supposedly secure places where I deposit my money instead of keeping it under my mattress?

If anyone has any great ideas about how we can change this ever increasing problem, please feel free to write them down and throw them in the bin accordingly.

Special thanks to my bank. Next time why don't you just take a run up and kick me in the nuts!