When it comes to advertising I recognize hyperbole and exaggeration, but I am still surprised when an advertising campaign makes the leap from exaggeration to outright fabrication. For example, my bank’s claim to be America’s most efficient bank is an exaggeration. Their promise to provide excellent customer service is a lie.
I have hated this bank for years, but never more so than after they messed up my mortgage and started putting my monthly payment into an escrow account instead of using those funds to pay the mortgage. This resulted in staggering late fees and interest charges that took several months to reverse. The bank’s response? “Oops!”
Not long after, America’s Most Efficient Bank managed to turn a simple home equity loan into a financial quagmire that would have confounded the best minds at Harvard Business School. My “Personal Banker,” who could not have passed the Head Start entrance exam, was clueless, so I wrote a very strong email to the Vice-President of Some Obscure Division, and he replaced my old Personal Banker with a new Personal Banker, who he swore was the very model of efficiency, meaning, I assume, that she had completed her GED. This one promptly lost my entire file and the whole process started over again. “Sorry!” said my new Personal Banker.
Another strong letter to the VP yielded an extremely apologetic response saying that he could not believe how America’s Most Efficient Bank managed to mess up so badly, and he offered to meet me personally at our local branch to resolve the issues once and for all.
As agreed, I showed up at 2:00 Monday afternoon but the Vice-President was not there. He was still not there at 3:00. After an apoplectic conversation with the Branch Supervisor of Efficiency, I went home and late that afternoon he left me a voice message: “Service at Chipotle was slow. Sorry!”
The Vice-President rescheduled my appointment and, several days later when I went back to see him I brought three coffee cans filled with loose change. Since I was at the bank anyway, I decided to take advantage of their change counting machine and cash in the loose change I have been accumulating for years .
The VP watched me pour can after can of change into the hopper. “That’s a lot of change,” he said pleasantly and of course I agreed. Then, as he watched, I pushed the “Total” button and the machine printed me a receipt with the grand total: One cent.
Wordless, I showed the receipt to the VP who frowned. “Well, you put in more than a penny, didn’t you?” he asked.
‘You saw me dump in three cans worth of change,” I said, with admirable restraint.
The VP thought a bit. “Were they American coins?” he finally said, but when he saw my face he immediately retreated. “We’ll fix this,” he said hastily.
Two hours later, after calls to corporate offices in Maine and South Carolina, he decided to “guesstimate” the total and pay me out of petty cash; I thought the amount they offered sounded low, but after I admitted that I did not pre-count my three coffee cans of loose change, I had to accept his offer. “Isn’t the machine supposed to count the coins?” I asked. “Do people really count their change before they come in?”
“They do after the first time,” he admitted.
As I left the bank, after assuring the VP that no, I was NOT interested in opening a savings account, I saw a sign by the front door: “Unforgettable Service.”
At last, truth in advertising.