Modern Banking - How is this an improvement?

Back in the old days -- the mid 80's -- when I worked in a Texas savings and loan as a teller, we were expected to handle 90% of customer transactions. Come to the window and the teller should be able to do whatever you need short of issue a credit card or mortgage loan. Of course if we couldn't help, we were reponsible for getting them right to the person who could.

I have not received a statement from Bank of America since September 2006. In January (or maybe late December) I called their Toll Free Customer Support number and was told "everything is okay." There was no reason they could see why mail wouldn't get to me. The even said they would mail out copies of the statements I hadn't recieved.

Now in July I've yet to get anything other than a replacement Debit card from the bank. I have to submit a copy of the statement with my Oregon Health Plan application, so I bit the bullet and decided to go and try to get the problem fixed.

After an hour in the bank, I had a piece of paper which may or may not be acceptable to the state, but that's another issue. Of course the branch was very busy and the wait was so long that Bank of America threw away at least 10 clients before me (these were names on the list that didn't respond when they were called), so the wait really wasn't that bad though the waiting area is so tiny it can hardly hold people.

The rest of the 45 minutes was spent 'solving' the problem. For some reason the bank decided suddenly it didn't have a street address any longer and rather communicate with me, it just stopped communicating. I supplied the information, but of course they fill out a piece of paper which will be picked up on Monday and go who knows where to be put in the system -- so there is no way to know that the problem is fixed. This took about 10 minutes.

The next issue was providing a current balance something official looking. In prior dealings with Oregon's Deptartment of Human Services they have refused to accept "Internet printouts", but this is the only thing the bank could offer.

So we then had to go through the pain of setting up online banking, but since I used to used their online banking system before they changed it 3 or so years ago, we had to recover that old log in information. Do bank employees have a quick way to do this? No, they have to used the same phone center support and wait on hold like the rest of us.

We did get through it all, but I have to wonder how on earth this type of solution is more efficient than the old fashioned person-to-person support we used to offer at the bank. At best, the bank took three to four times as long to fix the problem. That has to cost more. We set up an online account which I will probably never used again.

And conservatives want government to be run like business? Well, then imagine spending all afternoon at the DMV updating your address everytime you move.