When people call their bank/CU, they often have to navigate a shitty menu with missing options, wrestle with a poor quality signal, subject themselves to voice-print collection without consent or choice, only to reach an operator who potentially lacks competence and who might decide to spontaneously interrogate with irrelevant but intrusive inappropriate questions that waste the both the customer’s time and the customer’s phone credit. If they go online, they must wrestle with Cloudflare bullshit, cookie walls, and a shit-ton of 3rd party JavaScript.
The fix should be: write a letter. What should happen: you clearly and precisely articulate your request. It should be passed along and reach someone who can read and execute the request. Instead of re-explaining the situation to 3 different people and getting transferred around, you are off sipping on a mojito while they pass your letter around until it reaches a competent banker.
What really happens: some lazy as fuck jackass reads some part of your clear, well-articulated letter which makes a simple request that they should be able to handle. Then they press a button that spits out an email or postal letter that simply says:
“Call us.”
Mother fucker. I took the time to give you all the info in exact unambiguous perfect English, in writing, and some presumptuous lazy mother fucker makes assumptions about my phone situation an my patience with using their bullshit system.
Who is serving who? Recent generations of subservient consumers are happy to solve CAPTCHAs for suppliers and also provide irrelevant info. In recent years the consumer is expected to bend over backwards and work for the supplier. And strangely, it’s working (for the corporate overlords).
So new rule:
If a bank/CU does not respond to a letter with a letter, or a portal msg with a portal msg, it is legally deemed as a refusal to perform the task requested. If the bank/CU is contractually expected to act on a request, the customer need not dance for the supplier. The customer gets an automatic statutory reward of $500 or actual damages, whichever is greater.