No magic if you bank on penn-y and teller for your own dosh

What is wrong with our banks?

Why do they think they can lie to us, strand us a thousand miles from home in a covid-ridden country, refuse to give us our money when we want it, leave us standing forlornly on the doorstep of a hotel with no way of paying the bill, render us potentially destitute sleeping on a park bench, or in our car – AND then tell you it’s for our own protection!

Well, here’s a penny for ’em!

This is what’s just happened to us, AGAIN, this time in Trieste in Italy … at this moment we are parked outside a bijou little residence – a boutique hotel no less – on a Vespa-ridden main street, in blistering heat, with the concierge refusing to let us in because our credit card has been blocked by the bank.

Now we know we are way below the limit on that particular credit card and it has been accepted over the past three weeks in Slovakia, Czechnia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia without any problem.

And you can’t blame the Italians! No! It’s the bloody NatWest Bank being ridiculous again.

After more frantic phone calls to them we finally got through to the security team – he is a bank teller with an 007-type title that’s all… and let’s define bank teller, for that’s what these people still officially are.

“A bank teller is an employee of a bank who deals directly with customers, a customer representative. The job includes assisting customers with client transactions and depositing and withdrawing funds from an account.”

And that’s what this bloke does for a living, earning between 30-40 thousands pounds a year, I may add. But what he isn’t is some sort of international cyber cop working tirelessly to protect his customers and there money…

“Is it a claim? Is it a nurd? No! It’s Tellerman!”

And this is what Tellerman told us about why our card had been cancelled and yet again we have been potentially stranded in a covid lockdown country without any visible means of support:

Now remember – a penny for ’em!

We had waited 40 minutes to get through to him, being told by that nice lady that the bank ‘is experiencing a higher than normal volume of calls’ … educated us by showing how to do voice recognition and entertained us with some tinny Vivaldi. Very nice.

Then we had to wait for Tellerman, to make himself a cup of tea as he was working from home, butter his morning toast, put the dog out and tell the kids to be quiet.

Then he said in his official little voice: “How may I help you today?”

We explained our predicament. He listened politely then began to check things on his all-singing-all-dancing adding machine.

“Ah,” he said: “I see the problem… your card has been blocked for your own protection as there has been some mysterious activity on it indicating perhaps some criminal intent.”

We heard his wife come in from shopping – she let out a high wafting “Hi!”

He replied sternly: “I’m on the telephone machine to a customer darling.”

Their dog yawned as it watched morning television.

He continued: “There was recently a transaction involving ONE pence which alerted us to something untoward going on … the one pence trick is a strategic method used by international criminals to see if a stolen credit card is actually working or not.”

WHAT! NO THEY DON’T! They take – spend – purloin – hundreds or thousands to see if a credit card is working!

So, we got him to expand on his theory a little more and it turned out the one pence transaction had taken place six weeks earlier (so how come the Tellerman team only just spotted it?) and was to do with a transaction involving a Moonpig promotion (why did Moonpig bother about taking one pence – how much did it cost them?)

“We were acting for your own protection madam,” he said.

“Over a penny!” I was heard to exclaim in the background.

Tellerman said he had reinstated our card.

A penny for them…

Four hours later we used the same card to pay for a meal.

It was blocked!

#bankers #money #finance #PennyandTeller #creditcards