DIYHiFi.org

What a mess.

My former bank had made the mistake of withdrawing a student loan payment that I didn't owe, and as I had no more than $5 in the account, it all went on overdraft, that I conveniently let them sign me up to the week prior.

After a few calls they realized the mistake and promissed to do what they refused once before, and put the money back. I asked, will that include the overdraft charges, absolutely they said, provided you weren't on it already and it was our mistake that led you to it. I assured them it was, and obviously, they can see for themselves, era 2k3.

We had gone from bitching about $275 to $5. At this point my job had ended and I had no income so it was easy to keep track of nothing, otherwise with my accounting skills I'd have been oblivious the next statement wich declared I was still on overdraft, owing another $5 because of it.

So I made some calls and you know those damned computers , they were unable to look into my account and check that they owed me 5 dollars. I had to go downtown, $2 on the bus each way, get a 10 cent photocopy of my bank statements showing their thievery, which of course says the very same that the computer screen they are looking at says, and fax it to them.. ~75 cents...haaaa... haa. I then awaited the next statement, which had me at -$15 by now.

SO I made a few more phone calls. Customer service was most helpful again, explaining that it wasn't their department per se that owed me the 5 and now 10 and now 15 dolllars, because it wasn't their department that screwed up initially, but rather the student loan collections department. As he agreed yes, someone owes you that money, he was kind enough to help me further by attaching a note to my account, stating "we don't owe you 15 dollars", and then forwarded me over to collections, who wasted no time in reading me that very note, before re-forwarding me to customer service where I found, a dead line.. haaah.. hah.... haah, whew.. "That's all folks".

At some point along those calls I'd made the comment about knowing why this was happening, that they needed the extra income to pay off the million dollar enron fine they were just handed for their hand in the scandal, he laughed and assured me they had other ways. I said I bet you have many and will exercise them all.

Since the bug that originally afflicted the computer system now found its way over to the phones, I took a chance on the computers again, and detailed a long email explaining the entirety of the situation, as well as noting my appreciation for their classic and skillful run around.

Now owing $20 without reply, I went to the sent emails folder to copy the previous email into a new one, further spiced with additional compliments, and maybe with a provoking air of legalese. Within a few days I received a response that basically said "how terrible, so sorry, nothing I can do, will have to forward that to my supervisor". The next four emails said the same, where I got the sense it had gone all around the building and a good laugh was being had by all. The last email stated "my boss sent it back to me, told me to take care of it, so I'm going to write you a check for $5".... aaaaaaaaahhhh..haah.

A few exchanges later and I was being sent a check for $20, which I think didn't include the idiocy of having me fax my statements to my own fn bank, but that kind of irony is worth five bucks. I still don't get why they couldn't just deposite it into my account, maybe I was supposed to frame the check.

The next bank statement had me at owing $5 for being on overdraft. Yeah, the bug, insect-o-sue-us.

She would issue me another check for $5, told me I had to go and handle the bug at my branch which of course costs me another $4. I cashed the check and closed the account. When asked why, I replied "incompetence". "Anyone in particular", no just a very general incompetence.

Thus ends this sor... ooh.... not yet. About six months later I got a check in the mail for $50 from that bank who I no longer had an account with. It came with a letter claiming they had a computer glitch some time ago that caused people undo overdraft fees and that according to their records I was one of the chosen few affected, and according to their average, $50 should be enough to buy themselves an exterminator.

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'I am... everything is... changed... they're calling... your face... interwoven... who is...

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh,

Couldn't almost finish reading your story
What a nightmare. And you still had an reasonable ok ending...

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Rudolf Broertjes

Back when I worked at the big telecom company, we had a Sr VP of Engineering that was a lot like me. Short, mean, short-tempered, dictatorial, and well, no tolerance for BS. I liked him: everyone else was terrified of him.

I was watching Faux News the other day. (Who could imagine I would watch Faux News?) They were down in AZ, talking about the illegal criminal problem. They showed the Marine test range, down by Yuma.

Well...............

We put in a 2 GHz shot, for the range. We took an ITT radio, that was built for the railroad (low) 2 GHz band. We had to tune it for the Common Carrier (high) 2 GHz band. I was out, on medical leave, when the conversion was made. Not sure how the guys in charge did it, but they managed to chop off bits of the interdigital filters and matching networks, to get the damn thing to work. (It had problems, and by the time I figured out what was wrong, we had plans to put a MaComm radio in its place. Which is another story, for another time. It was a POC, of the highest order.)

Anyway, something came across my desk, one day. Something about R&D tax credits. We were supposed to show how much time we had spent on various "R&D projects", so we could get a tax break.

One of the projects......................."Unsuccessful attempt to modify ITT radio at Yuma."

Unsuccessful??? Hell, the damn thing was paying everyone's salary. OK, it had some problems, and I had just figured out what was wrong. (When they changed from low band, to high band, no one figured out some IF components worked on a different sideband. No one read the part of the service manual where it showed you had to reverse the polarity of the phase detector in the AFC module. No wonder it wouldn't stay on frequency!) So, I read through the rest of this thing, and realized it was not only wrong about that, but had lots of typos and grammatical and punctuation errors.


Hmmm.........no way this came from the Sr VP's office. He was a stickler for detail. But, it had his name attached. Not his signature, just name. And no mention of where to send it back to.

OK............I was not afraid of the "White Tornado", as he was called. So, I called him up, and asked what he wanted me to do with it.

He had no idea what I was talking about.

"Well, I had my doubts it came from your office. Too many typos, and get this..............'unsuccessful attempt at modifying ITT radio at Yuma.' I have parts for it, that I am fixing, in my hands."

Anyway, the boss didn't seem to care what I did with it, although I suspect he was intrigued when I suggested he look into who was sending out crap, under his name. Especially when he had no knowledge of it.

Did some digging............found the guy who wrote. Called him up. (He was in DC, with all the bigwigs.)

Started in by reaming him out for the Yuma gaff.

"Unsuccessful? Who told you it was unsuccessful? It is paying your salary, at this very moment. I know, because I am the guy who fixes all the parts. On top of that, there is no way this came out of ___ _______'s office, as he would not send out something with all these typos out. To say nothing of something that stupid. Not only that, but you didn't say where to return it to."
"Well, return it to me, of course."
"But I am down here in Texas. I don't know who you are. You better hope ___ _______ doesn't, because I just got off of the phone with him. And I don't think he was amused by all the screw-ups I pointed out."

The far end went silent. I think there was a "brown note", that was silent.

No idea what ever happened to him, but he deserved it, I am sure.

Jocko

_________________
"Because, I hate you guys. I hate you guys so very, very much.

Yours,
General Cartman Lee"