…if you can prove that you don’t need it.” — Bob Hope

I spoke to the bank today about my financial woes. I asked if they’d be willing to refund at least some of the fees they charged me, if only because of the fact that what they were fining me was almost five times the amount that I’d actually spent to get me into the red. Besides, one mistake in calculations and it costs me over four hundred bucks? Let’s face it: It would be wonderful customer service to be understanding and forgiving of a situation like this.

They didn’t really see it my way. Big shocker, no?

The customer service agent I spoke with said that the most she could refund me was $110. This is the equivalent of three overdraft fees. I told her that while I appreciated this, it really wasn’t acceptable. I asked to speak with somebody who had the ability to grant me a larger refund than that, and she resisted, because obviously the bank doesn’t want to give up more money than it absolutely needs to.

I tried to explain in as many logical ways as I could how ridiculous the whole situation was. Personally, I think that my best explanation was the one in which I responded to her claims that the bank had effectively loaned me the money to cover the charges, by countering with the fact that if the bank wanted to look at it as a short-term loan, they were charging me an interest rate that was almost one hundred times the prime interest rate.

Eventually, I got her to speak to a supervisor. She came back and told me that the supervisor authorized her to refund me $210, which equates to half of the total fines they charged me. She all but told me that I was lucky, because they very rarely go halfway with a customer. And then she had the audacity to ask me to rate the customer service on the call.

I don’t think she grasped the irony of the question, or understood why I laughed in response.

The real kicker? After agreeing to refund me $210, she fat-fingered the update to my account and only refunded me $120. When I called to get it fixed, the woman I spoke to wouldn’t update it because she apparently only had my word to go on that it was supposed to be $210. So now I have to defend that money all over again, apparently.