Goodbye Bad Bank

My first stop today (Saturday) was not the usual Costco, but Bank of America where I gladly closed my final account with them, my checking account. I've described the hassles I have had with their horrible customer service that makes you feel like a mouse in a maze with no exit so today when the teller said she was sorry to hear I wanted to close my account and is there anything she could do to make me change my mind, I said, "No."

She asked me why.

I told her that B of A makes it too difficult to do business with them. They are a prime example of the Peter Principle in action (I didn't tell her that last sentence, I just gave her a brief rehash of the nightmare experiences I had earlier).

So out I walked with the remaining balance in my account, $18.25. That'll show them!

When I told the teller I was closing my account, her response to me sounded like she had said it way too many times already. Not surprising.

Then off I went to Costco. Lucky for you I have no pictures to show today. I bought nothing new or exciting, just the same old stuff.

I thought about going to Circuit City since they announced they're closing their doors soon but after reading several message board posts on the audio/video forums, the consensus was it was definitely not worth a trip. The prices are no better than they were before the announcement, although they said people were buzzing in like flies snapping up stuff, apparently hypnotized by the word "sale" and ignorant of how little discount they were really getting. So I saved some gasoline and stayed home until lunch.

Near noon I drove to Shaka's in Alhambra to meet Katie for lunch; it was nice to catch up on things. She told me that when she was little, she thought I was Mexican.

"You thought your dad was a Mexican, eh?"

She said it was because of the mustache I used to have and she remembered eating Mexican food often. One night she and Greg were talking and he was asking her what race she thought the various people they knew were. Then he asked her, "what do you think dad is?"

That was my revelation for the day.

After dinner we went to WalMart to pick up a few things. When we were in line, all of the debit/credit card terminals went down so they were calling corporate trying to figure out what to do and it sounded like they'd have to get phone authorizations on every charge. I could see the lines getting longer and longer and it's a good thing we got out of there early because you sure don't want to be around a WalMart when people get into a frenzy.

Stepping into WalMart is like going back in time. For the world's largest retailer, they sure seem to be technologically challenged. I suspect those commercials about their "rollbacks" are talking not only about prices, but about their technical savvy.

And that's what happened today (Saturday).

Here's my ode to B of A..