Forrest Gump called in today, 40 or 50 times

Summary of a couple recent phone conversations:

Customer wants to cancel her automatic $50 transfer from checking into her savings account that's set to happen tomorrow, because she has a check that needs to clear and the $50 would bring her overdrawn. I tell her that it is too short of notice to stop the transfer, but since she has much more than $50 in her savings, I can just transfer $50 from savings into checking so that the balances in both accounts will remain the same. Essentially, it would achieve the desired effect because of a little creative maneuvering.

She says no, she can't do that because her savings account "isn't looking too good."

I start to explain that this just doesn't matter, that the balance in both accounts will be the same, but...

"Can I just transfer it back into the checking tomorrow, when it goes through?"

"...Yes."

Hmm.

A couple calls before that one, I ask for my caller's account number. He starts giving me the card number, of course. Our customers (this seems to be common among all bank's customer's, actually, in my experience) think that their account number and card number are one in the same, so this is not new. Annoying, because that requires me to jump to another screen really quickly while the customer is rattling off their card number as quickly as possible, but not new.

Luckily for me, this time the customer was very slow at reading, so I had time.

He listed off 12 numbers, then stopped.

This happens every so often, and I can't really be too harsh, seeing as how the last 4 numbers on the check card are printed on that holographic image and therefore kind of hard to read or notice, so I politely asked for the last 4. He repeated the 9th-12th numbers. I reminded him that there are 16 digits on a check card, and that there were 4 more after that.

Two more tries, and he got it.

Next up, I asked for his first and last name.

"My first name is Howard Johnson, my last name is Johnson."

"...Ok. Thanks, Mr. Johnson. Can you verify your address please?"

"4952 Miller Court."

"...City and state, please..."

"Oh. Minneapolis."

Whatever.

The requirement is that I get the city OR state OR zip, but I feel like it sounds weird to just ask for one of the three, so I just ask for city and state. In response, they almost always say just the city, just the state, or the city, state, AND zip, even though I didn't ask for it.

Again, whatever. Just, whatever.

He asks his balance, I tell him it's $7.01, and he asks why he can't use it. I just assume that his check card has been declined (he doesn't bother to tell me that information. Luckily after a month of being here and being exposed to non-questions and trying to figure out what they want you to do with them, it's pretty easy to figure out. It's like trying to decipher what a drunk person is saying. You work at a bar, you're probably pretty good at it. I'm pretty good at figuring out what idiots are really asking from me). I pull up the card information. It hasn't been activated.

Sigh.

Apparently the sticker on the front of the card, indictating that it's necessary to activate it before use, with the phone number to call to do so, wasn't written in the correct language, or didn't have enough pictures of naked ladies or bright enough colors on it to grab hold of the customer's attention.

No, sir, I can't activate it for you. Let me transfer you to the automated system so you can do it yourself, and here's how.

I feel bad for whoever is talking to him right now, trying to help him now that he couldn't figure out how to activate it in the automated system.

Ok, I may be a little mean in assuming that he can't figure it out, but based on our conversation? I'd say it's a pretty safe bet.

Now, going back to the card number-as-account number thing, though, I think that the wide use of check cards/debit cards is just plain confusing our customers. I do not think that this is just SBLB's customers, but more of, well, most customers under the age of 22 or so.

Long before I worked at a bank, when I was 18-19 years old and banked with Big Bank, I would call them fairly often to ask why my account was overdrawn again (yeah, yeah, I was that customer. I must be paying my karmic debt) and they would ask for my account number, which I almost never had. I would say, "I don't have that, but I do have my check card number. Can I give you that instead?"

I knew the difference.

One other thing I notice is how frequently people call and ask me "How much is on my card?" as though their card was the holder of their money, like it was a gift card. Forgetting that their account is what has the money, their card is merely one way to access the money in their account.

Whatever, I'm just being nit-picky now and sound like a giant snob.

I think I'm due for a One Good Thing post now. I'll try and rack my brain for one.