So for about three years of my life (2009-2012) I worked at a call center for Bank of America. Anyone who has worked at a call center will gladly tell you, it's up there with fast food and retail as one of the worst jobs a person can have. The pay is low, you're basically tethered to your phone and computer. You can get written up for going to the bathroom too frequently and every minute of your day is monitored while you have the oh so fun task of having people scream at you because of what greedy corporate jerks have decided to do.
And yet for all that, taking calls for a major banking institution taught me a lot about people and how they spend their money. Now I'm not going to act like the bank wasn't underhanded with some of it's fees and such, but more often than not, the people who overdrawn or over limit, did it to themselves. Here's just a few of the cases I had to deal with.
Where'd my money go?! I would get something like this at least once a week. Someone would deposit, say $200 in their account on a Monday, call on Wednesday and complain their balance was low. I would then proceed to read through the transactions they made in those two days. Now sure they'd put gas in the car or buy some groceries, but many times I'd see five bucks here for Starbucks, getting a snack at the drive thru and so on. It is mind boggling how people don't keep track of what comes out of their account. Since no one writes checks anymore, no one seems to bother keeping a check register of transactions. That really is where the majority of my angry overdraft calls came from and so many times this could be avoided if people simply took a few minutes out of their day to write down their purchases instead of assuming whatever the computer or phone balance told them.
Dumb college kids. Dumber parents. Too many parents send their kids out into the world with a bank account but don't bother to educate them on how it works or how to use it properly. So what happens? The kid gets overdrawn and the parents call us up asking us to refund the overdraft fees because "they didn't know any better." No, you need to be a f---ing parent! Then again, in many cases, the parent is just as bad. Sometimes we had to bring up their account to do a transfer only to find the parent had as bad a history of overdrawing repeatedly.
"Times are tough! Give me a break." Oh yes, the "economy sucks" excuse. These days if something's bad in your life, blame the government. Of course the people calling us fail to realize that call center agents live in the same bad economy, pay the same hiked up gas prices and deal with the same taxes. And while many times I can sympathize with the single mother or the elderly lady on a fixed income, it's hard for us to feel bad for your tight budget when we see things like $500 purchases at Gamestop or $50 to get your nails done. College kids pulled this line all the time yet we could easily see where they blew all their cash on video games, pizza and beer. Nice try.
People with money complaining about a small fee. The only thing worse besides people with overdrawn accounts trying to get sympathy for their own wasteful spending, is people with tons of money screaming over that $3 charge because they wanted a copy of a check they wrote. Rich people, you're not very well liked right now. We know you got to be rich by being smart with your money as opposed to the previous folks, but when you have tens of thousands in your accounts, you can afford $3, so stop acting like you're a victim. It's about as bad as listening to CEOs complain about paying more taxes or providing decent benefits to their employees. No one feels bad for you.
Maxed out credit cards. Bad credit. Anything credit card related. Believe it or not the credit card customers were often easier to deal with than the bank account customers. Maybe it was because credit cards at the bank's money and yet I'd get calls from people who had multiple cards and all of them nearly maxed out or folks wanting to use one of our cards to pay off another card from the same institution which is technically money laundering and illegal. Also after the big overhaul of credit after the economy went sour, the banks got stricter on a lot of things like not allowing people to go over their limit as well as doing random credit checks and finding outstanding debt leading to a card's limit being lowered or being shut down. Though my favorite was the mindset of "well the payment's due on Sunday and since the bank's closed, I can pay it on Monday and not get a late fee right?" WRONG. The internet and phone service are still available, so that excuse doesn't work. Seriously people, just pay your bill on time and if you can't let us know ahead of time so we can get you proper assistance.
People who still try to float checks. Once upon a time, people would write a check for an amount they didn't currently have and mail out the payment. The idea being the check would take time to clear and by the time that happened, they'd get paid and it would be covered. That does not work today. Thanks to advancements in technology and electronic conversion, most checks are cleared as soon as they reach the merchant. Also post dating checks doesn't work either. Once the merchant has the check, it's theirs to do what they want. Floating a check might work if you're mailing it and know it takes a few days to arrive or if it's too a small business like a church that only goes to the bank once every few weeks but anything written out to a big business is going to come out fairly quickly.
Foreign People who think they can haggle with the bank. Not to sound intolerant of foreigners who come to the country and have their first US bank account, but my God the number of people who I knew were immigrants thanks to seeing both their name and hearing their thick accent thinks America works like their marketplace back home and that you can haggle things like bank fees. Also they don't take no for an answer. I like to imagine these folks at Walmart trying to haggle with the cashier and holding up the express lane line. These almost always end up going to a manager who usually tell them the same thing before they finally give up and hang up.
Online banking with the computer illiterate. My step mom made a joke when she decided to buy herself an Ipod, that stores should have a sign saying "all seniors must be accompanied by a minor when buying electronics." All too often it would be 2 minutes to the end of my shift and as luck would have it, that last call was the 90 year old lady using her computer for the first time. These are the hour long calls that not only make you late to breaks/lunches/going home, but get your manager on your case for taking too long. Yes, on top of being bank tellers and account managers, we had to be tech support too except instead of getting that nice program to log into someone's computer to show them, we have to talk them through the process step by step. "Ok is your computer plugged in?....Ok see that long black cord in the back...." The sad thing is, while these were long calls, they were often the easier ones to deal with as the person on the other end was usually fairly patient.
Forgetting to update their address. Yes, it is amazing how many folks don't update their address with us then call us when they're mad their replacement debit card or bank statement didn't arrive nor did they bother setting up a forwarding address. When I moved I got two cards from the local mail carrier, I filled them out with my new address and they day I'd be moving in and gave them back to the mailman the next day. It's not that hard and it took me all of five minutes.
Crazy people. Actually crazy people was one of the more fun parts of my job. Every so often someone who was just out of their mind would call up. There was a lady who would call us repeatedly from Hartford Connecticut convinced she won the lottery in three states. There was a man who all I said was "how can I help you today?" and immediately started cursing me out because my first words were supposed to be asking for his verbal password yet nothing had loaded on my screen to indicate that. I got a ditzy girl who lost 3 debit cards in a month. I got a guy who was mad because he only had $2 in his account until payday and needed cigarettes. You get the couple/divorce drama of one half of the couple wanting to remove the other from the account which can't be done. My advice there is to go to the bank, take your money out and open your own. People who thought debit cards worked like credit cards and tried to make a purchase with no money in their account. The crazy libertarians who don't like having a bank account because "the government shouldn't tell me how to spend my money!" And sometimes you just get the sweet old people who just want someone to talk to and you get a half hour long call where they talk about their grandkids and their time in the army.
I could go on and on about all the weird people I'd get but I will say despite the lousy job, it taught me a lot about how to be responsible with my money and what to regarding dealing with the bank. The lessons I took away were 1)keep track of what you're spending. 2) Pay your bills on time. 3)Find out what fees can be charged to your account and how to avoid them. 3)Keep your information up to date.
Maybe next time I'll talk more about personal experience working in a call center.
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