10.06.04 - 11:14 a.m.

hey there... i HAVE to vent about the ridiculous year and a half long battle that i have been waging with the bank of montreal.... its driving me insane and only stubbornness keeps me going. thankfully, (or unthankfully if you speak to my ex-boyfriends) I have reserves up the waa-hoo of that...

So at one ridiculous point i decided to fill out one of those really convenient, sent to your mailbox, pre-approved, you are already a member, applications for a credit card with a ridiculously low interest rate for the first six months. savvy financial wizard me, i wanted the low interest rate until i earned enough money to pay off the little bit of debt i had built up.. I figured that i would cancel the card once i had used them shamelessly for their low interest rate, laughing all the way to those corporate fools who thought i would be fooled into a lifetime slavery of their credit card. i was either stoned, really bored, or jazzed up from some 'stick it to the man' conversation with my brother. either way, the application found its way out of the house.

my card arrived. i transferred a balance to it. i paid it off in about six months. i called them up to cancel the card.

apparently there are agents who will come come over and clip your toenails at three in the morning, but the agents in charge of canceling accounts are only present between 2:13pm and 3:43pm on wednesdays, fridays and every third fucking monday. and even if you manage to phone between those times, that fucking hold music will drive you insane while you wait...why do you get paul simon or some other benign musical effort when you want to check your balance or something, but for canceling a card, its backstreet boys, new kids on the block, or some other equally annoying screechy teenager moaning about love.

it took me a month to get someone on the phone. now, granted, i just kinda tried when i thought about it, if i was around the house. but still, a month?

i tend to get really testy when a) salespeople tell me they "have" to have my address to complete a transaction, and b) salespeople tell me they "have" to have a reason for you to cancel their service. I believe my first response was a swear word (hey, it had been a month), and the second response had the backstreet boys and a swear word. they got the message that i wasn't a happy customer.

over the next month i got no less than 4 phone calls from the company wanting to know if there was anything they could do to keep me as a customer. on the last phone call i asked them if anyone had taken out a restraining order against a corporation before. it was then that they got sneaky.

they then employed a brilliant strategy: they simply ignored me. they didn't cancel the card (which had been shredded by me at this point) and kept sending me bills. for six months. i called again (by this time living in quebec). they said there had been a credit on my account, and that was why it hadn't been closed, and could i just give them my new address so they could send a check, and couldn't we all just get along?

so then the bills got sent to my new address. i've ignored them for the past six months. i phoned them up the other day. i've gotten four phone calls this week. i no longer answer the phone that much, so the messages are funny:

'Mrs. G? In response to your phone call last week, my name is sean from Bank of montreal, and I just wanted to let you know that we received your complaint, and no, the Bank of montreal is not trying to force you to own their credit card. we will be looking into the matter this week. Usually cancelations are handled by another department you can reach at .... you can reach me at ..."

"Mrs. G? This is sean, from Bank of Montreal. we expect that we will finished our investigation into this matter by tuesday afternoon, and i will phone you again at that time. In the mean time, if you have any questions, or wish to reconsider canceling your account, it is still possible to reverse that decision. you can reach me at...."

"MS. G??? This is sean, from Bank of Montreal. I received your voice mail, and i think i do understand now that you believe that you have already canceled your account, though our records still show an active account. perhaps if you could phone me back at ...... we could discuss your reasons for being unhappy with our product, as we hate to lose customers. you can reach me at......"

"Ms. G? This is sean, from Bank of Montreal. Our investigation into this matter will be a little longer than expected, though i should be phoning you back with our findings on friday at the latest, to find out why your account is still open. you can call me at ...."

I could move to thailand i suppose.

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fucked up before - fucked up after