I just can’t get over how banks treat even some of their best customers when they dare ask for a loan. Isn’t that what banks are there for? To loan money? Isn’t lending one of the main ways banks make money? Their raison d’etre?
So why do they build walls between themselves and their best customers. Why do they treat borrowers like immigrants seeking illegal entry into their vaults?
Why don’t they make the lending process more open instead of opaque and cumbersome, friendlier instead of frustrating; smoother sailing instead of arduous, annoying and at times insulting to say the least?
Shouldn’t being a long-term good customer make a difference and warrant more than just some associate robotically saying “Thank you for being a good customer of . . . . If you don’t mind, I’d rather not name the bank as regrettably I own a lot of its stock that seems to go only in one direction–down.
All I’m asking for is a credit line equal to only 10 percent of what my Florida condo is worth. I want the line to pay an assessment to repair damage from hurricane Irma and for some improvements to the building without having to sell stock and bonds that are in the tank right now, including my bank’s.
You would think that for someone fairly well off, having good credit and being debt free, it would be a piece of cake arranging a relatively small credit line.
I keep calling.
Hardly! Still I keep calling this processor who answers his phone each time reciting his full name, then a long string of numbers by which he identifies himself, then robotically he asks to whom he has the pleasure of speaking.
Even after the 10th call, Mr. Robot say: “For your own security, please say your full name, date of birth and the name of the co-applicant.”
For weeks now I’ve been supplying business and personal tax returns, income and financial data, insurance policy declaration pages, while the bank’s conducted surveys on my ocean-front condominium, checked my credit score, etc. and I still don’t have an answer. Yet I must give them this . . . they never forget to keep thanking me for being a good customer.
Zero debt!
The fact that I have zero debt and reasonably strong income from a commercial property and from my PR firm TransMedia Group and other sources doesn’t seem to matter to functionaries going through the proverbial check list.
Neither does it matter that I’ve paid off much higher credit lines from the same bank on other properties I’ve owned. Apparently that’s not on the check list.
So no matter how much you make, how high your credit score, you’re still outside the wall and at the mercy of the almighty, uncompromising check list.
Yet you’ll continue to hear insanely again and again . . .
THANK YOU FOR BEING A GOOD CUSTOMER!