"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

pnc sucks worse than mbna
October 14, 2003 - 6:36 pm

today's case: calling pnc bank to set up overdraft protection on my checking account. one option, i learned, is that they can link my checking account to an mbna credit card.

good deal i thought, i already have an mbna credit card. granted, i consider mbna to be a horrible company and only keep the card since i've had it for over seven years - credit history and all that.

round and round i go at pnc getting transfered from person to person, until one says, 'well i need to send you to mbna and they can set you up.' at this point, it's been thirty minutes and three people, so i don't give a rat's ass who i get sent to as long as this gets done.

mbna is quite confused. they are a credit card company and can't do anything with pnc bank's computer system, this makes perfect sense to me as soon as i hear it. the lady was quite sorry, but wanted to know if i wanted a loan or perhaps any other way for mbna to sink it's rancid financial claws in my hide.

i politely declined and called back to pnc bank.

at just over the forty-five minute mark (total time for this epic adventure) a very nice lady came on. i explained to her, having got my request down pat after four practices, what i wanted to do and was ready to demand the following if she said i needed to go to mbna.

1) she had to stay on the line with me and mbna and pnc could battle who i need to talk to..

2) she transfer me to a pnc customer service manager who i offer option 1 to.

i did my best to stay light and cheery, knowing this lady had nothing to do with my past fort-five minute debacle.

she, however, went off on a quite unexpected track. she explained pnc needed to have my signature on file - that there's some sort of form i need to fill out.

i'm thunderstruck. a form that only one in four customer service rep knows about?

i express some of my dissatisfaction to her, being a civil as possible.. again, knowing it's not her fault and express i'm glad to finally learn the true.

she offers to mail me the form.. or says i can just pop into the local branch.. i explain the local branch is about six hours from me - a bit much for a 'pop on in' and that i won't need the form, i'll be going with a bank down here instead.

she got very quiet.. and then asked 'is there anything else?'

so, i left her and composed, what i consider to be, a lovely email outlining my complete dissatisfaction with pnc's customer-life-wasting-department.

yeah, so. what did you do today?