matching tracksuits

What do you make of a bank that offers auto loans only through an automated online process? What do you make of a bank that provides no customer support regarding auto loans? What do you make of a bank that denies you a loan of _less_ than what you currently have in a savings account of _that very bank_ when you have a credit rating in the top 10 percentile?

My answer: not much — at least, not much that’s not heavily laced with profanity.

The bank in question is “Bank of America”:http://www.bankofamerica.com/index.cfm, which is currently the institution that provides us with our banking “services.” After yesterday’s experience, we will have absolutely nothing to do with Bank of America and their “higher standards”

The story: Kinga and I have decided to go bio-diesel, and the first step in that process is, obviously enough, buying a diesel car. We found a 2000 Jetta diesel sedan for a good price and made an accepted offer.

I called my local branch office of BOA(Bank of America) to ask what documents I would need to bring to apply for an auto loan. The young man who answered the phone politely asked me to hold on while he checked with a banker. He returned to the line and told me that I would need two forms if ID — exactly what I’d suspected. I arrived at the location to be told that actually to apply for the loan I would have to use Bank of America’s online services. Essentially I’d driven all the way there to be told not that I could do it at home, but that I _must_ do it at home. Why I wasn’t told this over the phone is a complete mystery that can only be explained as incompetence.

I returned home, filled in the necessary online forms, and almost immediate was told,

bq. We are unable to approve your auto loan application at this time. […] You’ll receive a letter in the mail within 30 days. This letter will include more information about your decision.

Given the balance in our bank account and my credit rating, what could be the cause? Simple: I do not make enough money as a teacher’s aid to get such a loan on my own (which says as much about the nation’s education system as it does about the bank), and Kinga, as a Pole, has no credit history.

Now, I could understand this if we were applying at another bank, but at my own bank? An institution that has _immediate_ access to my account and can confirm a steady, consistent stream of deposits and a large savings account?

To top it all off, I was not even asked for how much the loan would be. It would have been, in fact, around 70% of what we’ve already deposited in savings!

Needless to say, I was more than furious. I was even more enraged to learn that there is actually no human being I can talk to about a car loan from Bank of America. Everything refers me to BOA’s online “services.” This means that my loan application was processed entirely and rejected by a computer.

On the recommendation of a friend, I called the local SunTrust branch, talked to a human being, and was still receiving phone calls and help from her after business hours at seven in the evening! %(insetL)As an aside, the kind woman at SunTrust told me that I was the third person _that day_ to contact her looking for a better banking experience than what they’d received at Bank of America.%

SunTrust has won our trust and business, whereas Bank of America has lost it permanently.

What is most infuriating is the fact that my credit rating is now lower because of BOA’s unwillingness to pay people to talk to those of us wanting a small loan. The “online bio of the president of BOA”:http://www.bankofamerica.com/newsroom/bios/bio.cfm?BioID=lewis, Kenneth Lewis, web site bio brags that he runs “one of the world’s largest financial institutions, the fifth most profitable company in the world and the ninth most highly valued company in the world by market capitalization.” Reuter’s reports that BOA “posted a $4.99 billion profit last quarter” (“Reuters”:http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-05-02T172006Z_01_N02278626_RTRIDST_0_FINANCIAL-BANKOFAMERICA-WALMART.XML), so they’re pretty good making money, not fairly dismal at helping people.

But there are more compelling reasons for changing institutions. According to Reuter’s,

bq. In February 2005, Bank of America said it lost track of computer tapes containing account data for about 1.2 million federal government employees, including some U.S. senators.

bq. Three months later, New Jersey authorities charged several people over the compromising of accounts at several banks, including some 60,000 Bank of America accounts.

bq. Bank of America was also one of many credit card issuers affected by a breach affecting some 40 million cards and traced to CardSystems Solutions Inc., a third-party processor. (“Reuter’s”:http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-05-02T191514Z_01_N02290808_RTRIDST_0_FINANCIAL-BANKOFAMERICA-SECURITY-UPDATE-1.XML)

So they’re have significant security vulnerabilities and they’re worried only about their bottom line.

h2. Cosa Loro

Really the only difference between a bank and a mafia loan shark is the amortization frequency and the penalty for default.

Both the mafia and the banking industry make it even more difficult for you to get a reasonable loan (i.e., one that you can repay in your lifetime) by putting unreasonable stipulations on the loan. If you’re a risk to a bank — in other words, if you have a bad credit rating — the bank offers you a loan at a _higher interest rate_, thereby making it more difficult to repay it.

“We don’t think you’ll be able to pay this back,” bankers say, “So we’re going to make it more difficult for you to pay it back.”

Where’s the logic in that? It doesn’t even make sense from a banker’s point of view. If a bank has to foreclose on a house financed with a high-interest loan, they’ll up auctioning it off for a substantial loss.

Still, they get their money no matter what. It’s a good gig, this money-lending scheme the banks have…

I’m looking for a second job to get a little extra money in the bank. We want to buy a house, and every little bit helps.

I was looking through the classifieds at Mountain Xpress when I found the perfect job scam. The nature of the company was pretty obvious from the advertisement:

Companies desperately need employees to assemble products at home. No selling; any hours. $500 weekly potential. Information: 1-985-646-1700, Department NC-6529. (Source)

Up to 2k a month, and you don’t even have to leave your house? Sounds too good to be true, so of course it is. But I like playing the sucker from time to time, so I called.

“Are you calling about the ad in the paper?” a woman asked when I called. No greeting, no pleasantries -– straight to the chase.

“Yes,” I reply.

“Is this the first time you’ve called?” my inquisitor asks. If red flags hadn’t been up when I first read the ad, they would be up now.

“Yes,” I respond.

“Are you calling for yourself or for someone else?” Now comes a bit of a puzzle. If this weren’t such an obvious scam, I might in addition to myself be calling for my wife. Two people can put together twice as much cheap plastic crap as one person.

Thinking all this, I hesitate, the reply, “I’m not sure.” I was going to ask for clarification, but the pleasant lady didn’t give me a chance.

“Well, you call back when you are sure.” Click.

Being rude to me on the phone is not a good idea. I like to call back. And so I do. Unfortunately, another woman answers the phone.

I decide to go through the whole monologue.

It turns out there are simply dozens of companies out there who just need my help. “What will you be doing?” the operator asks rhetorically and almost breathlessly. I can put together wooden CD shelves, jewelry boxes, and so on. This fine company will put me in contact with all these other companies who need my help. All for just a small fee of forty-three dollars. “And you don’t even need to worry about that, because we have a money back guarantee, written — on page three of our brochure.” It’s just too bad I don’t have one of these sitting in front of me. Still -talking- reading on the same breath as she started the -conversation- monologue with, the kind lady tells me that I can put this small, insignificant fee on a credit card, or I can send a check–why, I can even do it C.O.D.

“Come to me baby! Come to me C.O.D.” I think. She probably wouldn’t get the allusion. (Do you? Quick, quick — name the song and artist. And no Googling!) Besides, I couldn’t get a word in even if I greased it up really well, so I just smile to myself and continue listening.

Finally, I sense the spiel is winding down, and I get ready to say, “I’m not really interested.” Here it comes… “And so do you have any questions, sir?”

“No, but I don’t think I’m interested.”

“Something-unintelligible-about-four-syllables-long” comes the staccato reply, then click!

I bemoan my poor memory: “Why, oh why can’t I remember this woman’s name?” I have to call back. There’s just no choice.

It’s a moral imperative. (Quick — what movie?)

I get to the “Is this the first time you’ve called” point, and say, “No — actually it’s the third time.”

“Oh?”

“I’m just calling to suggest you hire some operators with better people skills,” I continue.

“I know,” she sympathizes. She confesses that they’ve been getting a lot of complaints. I think, “Sounds like you should be monitoring your calls, with the little announcement at the beginning of the phone call that we’re all so used to hearing now.”

We chat for a couple of minutes. There’s no way for anyone to track down who it was that took my two calls, she explains. All the lines are directed to the one phone number, and there’s just a room full of people answering these phones.

“Well, then I suggest you get better telephone hardware, because tracking who answered a call like that is a pretty basic thing,” I explain. Whoosh — over her head.

Should I ask for a supervisor? She probably wouldn’t know what one is. “We just clock in, start answering the phones — we don’t even know who we’re working for.”

After I hung up, I thought about calling back again, but what for? These jerks have to deal with enough jerks like me, I’m sure.

They’re just tryin’ to make a buck…

Why is it that whenever I’m playing bridge and everyone says, “This is my last hand,” and runs off right after the cards are dealt, I get “a hand like this one”:/images/47.jpg?

I know — we’re all suffering from gas prices. But it’s been ridiculous around here since we moved. At one station here in Asheville it was $2.11 about three weeks ago. This station sells gas mixed with ethanol, and so it was about ten cents cheaper than every other place around. Then it jumped up to $2.23. A few days later: $2.32. A week after that, last Friday: $2:44.

As of yesterday: $2:52.

That’s an 18% increase in about three weeks. How is that possible? Has the price of a barrel of gas increased proportionately in the last three weeks? No. It’s finally broken the $60 a barrel mark, and seems to be bearing down on $70 a barrel, but it hasn’t gone up that much.

It’s a good thing there’s not a milk cartel to go along with the oil and drug cartels. Can you imagine if the prices of everything fluctuated this badly?

You’re a loyal wireless customer. You always pay your bills on time, and you’ve never harped on or bitched about anything.

What happens when someone steals your cell phone and your contract is with a reputable company that is vaguely interested in keeping its customers satisfied? The answer is irrelevant, because there are a number of solutions to the problem that involve keeping the customer happy (so that, naturally, she will continue giving money to the company).

What happens when someone steals your cell phone and your contract is with a company that has no idea what “customer satisfaction” means and is more interested in covering its butt than providing a service? You’re charged a penalty.

I had a cell phone with Plus GSM, a sorry excuse for a wireless provider that has such generous packages as twenty free minutes for a forty-zloty monthly charge.

“Choose us and you get three short but entire conversations for free!”

Such are the sorry offers you get in Poland, where an adolescent free market is still virtually competition free. You swallow hard and take what they give you, if you want a cell phone.

I had no choice. I signed a contract, used my twenty minutes, sent a ton of text messages instead of talking to people, and despite the ridiculously small number of minutes I had, was relatively satisfied.

When Kinga and I moved to the States, I left my cell phone with my father-in-law. This was because Plus GSM would not cancel my contract even under such extenuating circumstances. I was told I would have to pay an early-termination fee. Nothing new there – wireless providers in the States do the same thing (although Verizon told me that I could cancel without a penalty if I were moving to a location that didn’t have Verizon service. What is ridiculous about it is Plus GSM’s early termination penalty fee is 800 zloty, which represented 73% of my monthly salary!

Seventy-three percent! I decided instead to leave money for my monthly payments with my parents-in-law and let them use the free minutes (My wonderful package included a whole twenty free minutes!) until the end of the contract.

Last week, my mobile phone was stolen. I informed Plus GSM via fax and asked them to discontinue service to that particular cell phone. The plan was simply to continue paying the monthly fee until the contract is completed in November and be done with it. To do this, we’d have to buy a new SIM card for the cell phone, even though we wouldn’t have a phone to put it in.

We wrote a fax to Plus GSM about this. For those who can read Polish:

Zwracam sie z prosba o calkowite wylaczenie karty SIM mojeg telefonu nr 695-635-967. Prosbe swa uzasadniam tym, ze telefon moj zostal skradziony. Poniewarz w tym momencie przebywam w USA chcialbym upowaznic do wszystkich zmian na moim koncie pana Jana Jedrusia [...]. Zwracam sie rowniez z prosba o udostepnienie Janowi Jedrus adresu e-mail oraz nr, ktore umozliwia znalezienie telefonu.

Wiem, ze dane te powinny znajdowac sie na mojej umowie ale niestety umowa ta zaginela podczas mojej ostatniej  rzeprowadzki.

For those who can’t read Polish, the fax basically informed them of the situation and authorized my father-in-law to make any changes necessary in my account to resolve the matter.

Plus GSM did as requested. Sort of. They interpreted that fax as a cancellation of the contract and informed my father-in-law that the penalty bill had been sent.

Infuriated, I sent the following fax, in English:

I have been informed by Jan Jedrus, my father-in-law, that despite the fact that my telephone was stolen, you intend on forcing me to pay the penalty for early termination of contract.

My phone was stolen and you want to penalize me further? I’m a victim, and you’re treating me like I’m the thief!

That is the singularly most immoral business practice I have ever encountered.

bq. I know your argument: “Well, sir, if we just canceled contracts whenever someone reported their cell phones stolen, we would lose a fortune because so many people would lie and then sell the phone!”

I’m sorry, but that is not my problem. You are the ones operating a business, and that means you are by default taking a risk. Customers should not be taking a risk in signing a phone contract.

What you’re doing doesn’t even make good business sense. You want to make money, not lose it. When I come back to Poland, I will need a cell phone. If you treat me well, I will chose your company, which would result in me paying much more than 800 zloty. However, you want me to pay 800 zloty now and thereby guarantee that I will never use your services again. Are you really that short-sighted?

You’re just showing that in Poland, it’s better to steal than be honest. It’s better to be a thief than to be an honest customer. If there were any justice in Poland, and there is not, you would be shut down for your fraudulent business practices.

I refuse to pay this penalty

Kigga’s Dad talked to these folks several times, and they told him that if we didn’t pay, they’d take me to court. But when we got to thinking about the details of this situation, and we realized something startlingly simple: we never canceled the contract. If they take us to court, we simply and honestly deny that we canceled the contract, and they have no proof that we did.

Still, we wanted to finish this in a respectable, honorable manner, so we sent yet another fax, explaining explicitly that my father-in-law had my authorization to do anything necessary to resolve this, including buying a new SIM card. We wrote yet another fax, expressly saying that my father-in-law had “permission” to buy a SIM card for the phone. Again, for those who know Polish:

W zwiazku z tym ze aktualnie mieszkam w USA a moj telefon, na ktory nie wygasla jeszcze umowa zostal skradziony upowazniam pana Jana Jedrusia zamieszkalego w Jablonce [...] do zakupu zastepczej karty sim na rzecz mojego konta. Pragne wyrazic moje oburzenie jak malym zaufaniem traktujecie swoich stalych i uczciwych klientow. Bylem waszym klientem ponad poltorej roku, zawsze w terminie placilem rachunki. W sytuacji kiedy przeprowadzam sie do USA a kilka tygodni pozniej, telefon zostaje skradziony z kuchni mojego tescia firma naraza mnie jedynie na kolejne koszty i traktuje mnie jak zwyklego oszusta. Pragne tutaj zaznaczyc, ze w USA w kazdej firmie telefonii komorkowych w przypadku przeprowadzki mozna bez zadnych kosztow wycofac sie z umowy. W Polsce nie jest to jeszcze mozliwe, to ciagle jeszcze mlody kapitalizm i niestety nie umiecie jeszcze szanowac swoich klientow. Przyznam, ze najwygodniejsze dla mnie byloby zaplacenie abonamentu do konca waznosci umowy, niestety jak poinformowal mnie tesc po rozmowie z biurem obslugi klienta, firma nie wyrazila na to zgody.

Bardzo prosze rowniez o przyslanie na moj adres internetowy adresu e-mail do dalszej korespondencji. Musze przyznac, ze forma komunikowania narzucona przez PLUS GSM naraza mnie i pana Jana Jedrusia na znaczne koszty. Bardzo prosze o wyrozumialosc i odstepstwo od Waszych nieprzyjaznych zasad.

Highlights, for non-Polish readers, include, registering “offense at how you treat your honest clients with such little trust,” and a comment about “young capitalism” in Poland, which means that unfortunately “you don’t know how to respect your clients.”

After we sent this, my parents-in-law went back to the nearest Plus GSM in Nowy Targ to buy the card. The sales rep asked for a copy of the contract. My parents-in-law didn’t have it; I have no idea where it is. Plus GSM _does_ have a copy in Warsaw, but they refuse to send it. My father-in-law, angered beyond belief, suggested that he just pay the rest of the contract monthly payments then and there.

“No,” was the reply.

And so we’re just forgetting about it. Let them take us to court – for a little over $200 dollars. Let them do whatever. I, for one, will never have anything to do with

Plus GSM, and if you’re in Poland, I suggest you do the same.

My name is [GS] and I have an account with Plus GSM. In order to prove my identity, I offer the following information:

• My telephone number is [deleted].
• My account number is [deleted].
• The account address is [deleted].
• My parents’ first names are [deleted].
• Lastly, I’m including a photocopy of my passport, which you have on file as well.

I am writing about two things. First, I would like the billing address changed for the remainder of my contract to: [deleted]

I called customer service and was informed that I can do this through the mail. I trust this is sufficient.

Second, I am declaring that I have no intention of renewing the contract. Do not renew it automatically. I realize that you want this done thirty days before the expiration of the contract, but I will be in America at that time and will be in no position to contact you. Not only that, but it is unreasonable to expect me to keep track of a cell phone contract that I will not even be using personally. Therefore, I am making the request now. Please bear in mind that if you do renew the contract against my wishes, as expressed here, the bills will go unpaid.

I must confess, though, that I’m very disappointed with your customer service and the ridiculous inability to perform such simple tasks by phone or internet. In addition, the 30-day-before time requirement for canceling the account is outrageous, and is nothing but an immoral attempt to trick unwitting customers into another contract, leaving them with the choice of continuing in an unwanted contract or paying an unjustifiably high cancellation penalty. As a company in an EU nation, you really should bring your customer service up to an appropriate level.

I appreciate your attention in this matter. Please send the appropriate confirmation to the above address.

It seems all I do is complain about Poland lately. But the truth is, I’m not the only one.

Many people here feel that the country is in bad shape, due primarily to corruption, and only getting worse.

There are so many wonderful things about this country — it’s a shame that the most visible thing for me and many is the negative.

that I stand there with the awful truth rattling around in my head–that which I only admit even to myself only rarely. Sometimes the class dynamic is such that I could teach the class drunk or sober, I could teach new material or review material that I know is problematic, I could be a hard-ass or totally relaxed, and the result in each case would be the same: a complete waste of time.

Really, I walk out of some lessons thinking I wasted my time and their time together. A class of twenty — that’s fifteen man-hours down the tube.

And I wish I could put all the blame at students’ feet. After all, it’s only human not to want to fess up to your own failings. But truth is, I waste as much time as they do sometimes. The trouble is, I only realize that _after_ the time has been wasted. (Nice passive attempt to avoid responsibility.)

The upshot is that there’s always tomorrow’s lesson to make up for it. But sometimes tomorrow’s schedule looms instead of sitting there passively.

but I’m pretty sure that strange things as were happening around

here last night should not be happening.

I’d literally just finished complaining about the techno hell

I was scheduled to endure and had gone over to “C-Span”:http://c-span.org to watch some more of the Rice

confirmation hearings when suddenly the light on my desk went out and the icon indicating that my laptop had

switched to battery power. %(insetL)Frank made the comment that it could be due to the age of the building,

speculating that it could have been pre-WW2 and originally unwired, then wired and re-wired. I’m not quite

sure of the age of the original building itself, but it could very well have been pre-WW2. In 1999-2001,

though, it was completely rebuilt. I don’t mean renovated, I mean rebuilt — all that’s left of the original

building is the foundation and the outer walls. The floor Kinga and I live on was actually non-existent then,

so everything here is about four years old.%

Short-term power outages happen around here (super-rural

Poland) semi-regularly, so I thought nothing of it. In fact, for the first time in my life, I was _happy_ about

the apparent blackout. “Peace!” I thought.

But the thum-thum-thum-th-th-thum-thum-thum was still going

on downstairs.

And Senator Bidden (bless his compromising heart) was still making me smile via Real

Player and the LAN router across the hall.

Intrigued, I tried the kitchen light. Nothing. Still further

intrigued, I went out into the hall and tried the light switch there. “Ba-ba-ba-PING!” and the incandescent

lights were on.

Odd. %(insetR)As a side note, I will very irritatedly report that most of the students

were _not_ hooting and hollering but just sitting at the edge of the room — a typical dance. Why the music has

to be so loud for _that_, I’ll never know.%

I put on my coat and descended into Techno Hell. The

teachers’ room there was without electricity, but the adjacent areas had power. In fact, as I left, I noticed

that there were lights on almost throughout the school. Talking to the teachers there, I learned that they were

just as confused about it as I was. No one knew what was going on.

Returning home, I decided to start

cooking dinner by candlelight — a minor irritation, compounded by the bit of back luck that had given Techno

Hell a different electrical fate than me. “Why oh why didn’t _they_ lose power?” I muttered.

Then the

fridge switched on and I thought I was saved.

I reached over to turn on the light — nothing. Fridge

running, no light. I checked the lights in the living room. They worked. I went to the bedroom — nothing

going. So then I did the only logical thing: I systematically went through the apartment switching on all the

lights to see which power outlets were live and which were not.

The bizarre results:

* The

bedroom and bathroom were completely without power.
* The living room was fine, even though one of the

outlets was in the same wall as one of the dead outlets in the bedroom — directly opposite it, in fact. In

theory, on the same line.
* The main light in the kitchen didn’t work, but the small light above the sink

_did_.

Now, as I said, I don’t know much about electrical wiring, but this seems pretty damn odd to me.

And it seems to indicate some pretty weird construction practices. When the maintenance man came, I stood

talking to him for a moment with my neighbor, and I found out some even more bizarre info:

* Most of the

wiring for the upper floor where we live goes through a fuse box _on_ that floor — which makes since.
*

Some of the lines run through another fuse box _two floors below us_.
* My neighbor had power everywhere

except where his fridge was plugged in.

“Who the hell thought up such a wiring plan?!” I wanted to

scream/laugh, but I bit my tongue and thanked the maintenance man for his help.

An hour or so later, the

power all came back on, but I’m still scratching my head over it.

That’s not the only example of weird

wiring in Poland. The switches for most bathroom lights are _outside_ the bathroom. You flip it on as you

enter. In the first apartment I lived in, though, the lights were on the _hinge side_ of the door, so if you

forgot to turn on the light (which happened when I first arrived), it wasn’t just a matter of sticking your

hand out the door. You had to go back out into the hall, close the bathroom door, and turn the light on…

We have an apartment above an elementary school. That’s living hell when they have school dances. They usually last from two in the afternoon until eight at night: the first two hours for the younger kids and the last four hours for the older elementary school students.

I remember the after-school dance I chaperoned while student teaching in a junior high school. It was an hour and a half.

Four hours seems a bit of an exaggeration.

Our apartment is one floor above the area where they dance, though not _directly_ above it. The junior high kids who come in and serve as DJs turn the music up so loud that the floor of our apartment literally vibrates, and the you can hear the super-low-frequency bass tones reverberating throughout the _whole_ apartment — walls, glasses, ceiling, everything shaking. %(insetR)You never _truly_ notice how repetitive techno music is until you can only hear the bass and drums. Then, “variation on a theme” seems to be too generous a description.%

For an _elementary school dance_.

I asked one of the teachers if she didn’t think that was perhaps a bit too loud for such young ears.

“It could do serious, lasting damage,” I said.

“Yes, but if we didn’t play it so loud, they couldn’t hoot and holler as they like to do during dances,” was the response.

I’ll pause for a moment to let that one sink in.

All sorts of things were swirling in my mind, and the delicacy of the moment was highlighted by my lack of Polish fluency.

First reaction: “Hum, I always thought it was the teachers who ran a school.” Tactless no matter the level of fluency.

I settled for something along the lines of, “Well, why not simply tell the kids, ‘Look, it’s too loud. You’ll have to be quiet or you won’t hear the music,’ or, ‘This is as loud as we’ll play it. So if you don’t like it, you don’t have to come.’”

“We should,” she laughed.

But they won’t.

So here I sit, thirty-six minutes into a four-hour marathon of “thum-thum-thum-th-th-thum-thum-thum” techno hell.