Dear Royal Bank: Fail

So I had some financial woes of late, it’s a long story but essentially something happened to my bank account and I had to rush and put all my money on my credit card.  But then there was no money in my account to make their metered out payments, and it was around Chinese New Year so that means no real money coming in for a month or so to send money home.

Anyway it was a bit of a mess, and when I tried to talk to them about it, all they would do is spout parroted bullshit with out any thought.   That’s assuming they would talk to me at all and not be incredibly rude and condescending.   So I ended up just writing it off, I’d make a payment when I was able to send money home.  Normally that would be in a month, two tops… but because of Chinese New Year it ended up taking 3 months to get enough money together to be worth sending home.

My card got cut off, and no one called me or informed me of what was happening.  The only reason I even found out was because I couldn’t update apps on my ipod, and when I called the bank, everyone I talked to was unbelievable rude.  Like I was some sort of  degenerate who had be accumulating mountains of debt and paying nothing for years, as opposed to I missed two payment I live overseas and I contacted then and let them know in advance.  Assholes.

I got pissed off with the rudeness and  asked to be transferred to someone else with manners.  After much BS I finally got someone who didn’t have their head in their ass, got everything sorted out and then I specifically asked if I was going to be running into any other issues or problems in relation to this situation.  I was assured that I wouldn’t and happily went about my life.

Oh another unforeseen shit fest was, I applied for a loan online but wasn’t able to complete it, it would have paid off my credit card and been at a much lower interest rate.  I needed to be in Canada and walk into a bank to sign the papers, but then all this happened and temporarily screwed my credit rating so I couldn’t get the loan while I was home.. most annoying part?  My credit rating corrected within 2-3 months when I was no longer in the country… annoying.

Then, in August they jack my interest rate.. ASSHOLES.  I pay for a low interest rate card and then they bump my interest up…dicks.  I call, pitch a fit and am again treated like a complete piece of shit.  I progressively get more pissed off, and finally get someone polite who agrees that the bank actually screwed up, but she’s not high enough up to change or fix anything.  She promises to talk to people and call me back.  No call, they have completely failed at communicating with and getting back to me.  GRRR

So I call again, pitch a bit of a fit, and insist on speaking to manager, they have taken another installment of interest at this ridiculous rate and everyone is so rude.  There is no manager on, but this girl takes the whole story down and swears someone will call in 24-48 hours max.  Four days later no god damn call.

Now in this time, it occurs to me that I really should just tell them to stuff it.  I mean if I let the card default, let it go into collections, wait a while then contact collections  I can pay it back at 30-50 cents on the dollar.  So I get to keep my money now, don’t have to borrow money from my friend and i’m kinda debt free now.  BITCHES.  sure it messes up my credit rating, in a country I don’t live in and have no intentions of going back to anytime soon.  Shrug, what do I care?

And if I wasn’t such a god damn goodie two shoes…. that is exactly what I would do.  So lame, I wish I was badder…. but given how badly Visa was behaving  I was ready to be bad.

But.. sigh… this week I called and actually got someone intelligent and polite on the phone, who listened to me rant and actually tried to fix things.  Returned the last interest payment (the interest rate had already been fixed) so they returned all they money they took illegitimately plus some.  When I said wasn’t really enough, I got a genuine apology and he offered me a different card with some points that would give me some merch.

Honestly, it still isn’t enough but I’m damn well taking it, I will pay my visa off.  But I am definitely going to investigate other banks credit cards and what they can do for me.  I’m a good customer, and they don’t seem to get that.

I have paid the thing off, but I’m completely unimpressed.