Take Back Your Cash and Leave a Tall Steaming Tip On Your Way Out

In Sandy Eggo, the official liberation libation station is Shakespeare’s Pub, a wonderful place to watch satellite futbol, participate in the Monday-night quiz, and lament the Empire.

after you spread out the newspapers, ask for your money in change.
this annoys them more. shit, they’re used to.

You forgot the part about pulling out a bottle of lighter fluid, spraying it all over the pile of credit cards and poop and then setting it on fire and kneeling before the flaming mess like Jimmi at Monterey.

Two banking stories…
1) As some of you know, I work for a company noted for riding the internet wave and then crashing on serious hard times due to greed and ineptitude. During the first freefall (2002), I nearly got into a full fledged fight with a banker because he said that my employer was a bunch of scumbags. He was right, but that wasn’t the point. He also included me which I took some serious umbrage and went after him. One thing he pointed out proudly was that he was a trader for a noted Canada City bank that was later busted by the SEC for helping ENRON hide Billions in losses (with a penalty to the tune of 165 million US America bucks.) I pointed out to him that no one loves banks and that this argument was as relevant as “two whores arguing about who was the better virgin.” He turned beet red from the laughter around the bar and just shot me dirty looks the rest of the night.

2) A decade ago, my no fee bank account was suddenly changed to a fee bank account. I was pissed as I did not get any notice. Turns out I did, but it was hidden away in a newsletter that I usually only take a passing glance at. Anyway, I wrote a serious and insulting email to the CEO of the bank.

I wrote him that I would happily take my business elsewhere and that he should stop making customers pay for the bank’s screwups. The bank had just been busted by the local securities regulator to the tune of $400 mil Canada City bucks for fudging trades on pension funds. At the time, the bank ran ads touting they were “Winning Customers, one person at a time.” Thinking myself a pithy wordsmith, I ended my sharp pointed and insulting letter with: XXX BANK is losing customers one person at a time. Two days later, I got a snotty email bank from the CEO’s assistant telling me that I was entitled to my opinion but that I should (politely) shut the fuck up and stop mocking their ad campaign.

I thought about sending a reply, but I opted not to as I took some personal satisfaction getting right under the skin of a CEO and pissed him off.

I still have an account ($100) and credit card at that bank, but I never use it and don’t care. I figure they have to maintain it, so why the hell should I give a damn? Just recently, the same bank just announced a No-Fee, no Min balance savings account which was just identical to the one they changed.

@ManchuCandidate: These are indeed crimes but as bad as it got, the Canadian banking system were never transformed into a full bore casino of incalculable odds of the US system. I think the Canadian system at least has the virtue of being positively capitalized.

@Serolf Divad: I was tempted but there are fire laws. Stinque.com are safety bugs, thus our lamentation of sound banking practices in our time.

@FlyingChainSaw:
Oh how they wanted to. If the Liberals who were in power at the time didn’t hold their ground and not deregulate the banks then we would be up to our eyeballs in it. Our current PM (Stevie McGoo Harper) was one of those who URGED bank deregulation. Seems rather quiet about it today.

Canada City banks are rather mum and embarrassed about the whole thing.

@FlyingChainSaw: I heart my credit union. Opened my account at age 11 and to this day I have never banked anywhere else.

@SanFranLefty: Oh, the commercial banks hate that, too, and the fact that grandparents and parents will open accounts for their kids at CUs, first, to hook them on the idea of community finance. It’s weird to drive around some locales on the coasts and see credits unions that have long outlasted their sponsoring companies.

@FlyingChainSaw: I belong to an international civil servant credit union, which for all I know finances abortion-on-demand and scholarships for eight years of undergraduate studies in Malmo, Sweden. Upside? No-fee ATMs in Tokyo. Downside? No ATMs in Bujumbura.

Thanks for this FCS. I have been seriously considering moving my accounts to the fantastic local bank in the neighborhood where I work and live (I have opened a couple with them in the last two years) and this is a great resource/kick in the ass.

@Nabisco: This is way wild retail banking. My state-chartered thrift has a branch now. Which never mattered to me since I bank exclusively by mail. Internet crime? Fine by me. If the criminals are all on the Internet, they’ll leave the post alone.